Sunday, October 7, 2012

Fine & Dandy Outfit Challenge

A couple weeks ago Bobby White of Fine & Dandy  and Swungover challenged his readers to present a Fall-to-Summer transitional outfit. I try to confine my outfit posts to things I've made or special events, so I took this as a challenge to do a dress revamp that's been waiting a couple years.

I've got a few Loco Lindo dresses that I've picked up at sample sales - I love the vintage-y rayon crepe print fabrics so I'm a sucker for grabbing ones that are too big for me with the intention of fixing them. This dress always vibed early 1930's to me, so I finally got to work at making it wearable. I wore the finished dress out dancing Friday night, and it was so much fun! The skirt length is technically too short for early 30's, but I'm more comfortable with knee-length anyway.



My new-to-me 30's watch, picked up at an antique mall last weekend. 
It keeps good time when I remember to wind it!

The original dress was too big in the width and length for me - I raised the shoulders about 2 inches (giving me nice high armholes that are so great for movement and dancing) and turned the front darts into princess seams to remove about 4 inches from the circumference (bodice and skirt). The green neck contrast originally wrapped around as a back neck yoke, but I lost that when I raised the shoulders, so I just added bias tape to finish the back neck.



I also removed the self tie and made it into a belt, and added some matching buttons to add to the 30's look. After I figured out how to reduce the bodice size, it was an easy revamp -  but I almost didn't make the submission deadline due to being super sick the last couple weeks, so I gave up some housecleaning to finish the project. I should do that more often! ;)

7 comments:

  1. That looks fantastic!! Great work, Beth!

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  2. Nice work! And that watch looks pretty fine. So funny to have spotted you at Bobby's place. :-)

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  3. Cute dress! It was great meeting you at Rusty's! I was the one GUSHING! Apologies for being creepy! LOVE THE BLOG! ~ Susie

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  4. I always enjoy reading your various offerings!
    There's an award for you on my blog!
    http://teacupsamongthefabric.blogspot.com/2012/10/versatile-blogger-award.html
    Laurie

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  5. Love the way you create and restyle vintage pieces. Beautiful work! :-)

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  6. No wonder you grabbed this! What scrumptious fabric! Lovely re-make. It looks like a frugal seamstress re-styled an earlier dress to fit a shorter '40s aesthetic.

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