CHRISTEPHI

I made myself a dress!  And it only took one day from drafting to completion. It's so comfortable! And I love the way the neck and shoulders give a lot of coverage, both for modesty and for protection from the sun. I got the fabric at JoAnn.  It has narrow metallic silver stripes between the navy and red. I'm tempted to make 6 more of these and live in them all summer long!  (Wait, did I just say summer?  We don't even have spring warmth here yet!)

The other evening I drafted a pattern for a 12-gore skirt following the instructions found here .  The next day I cut gores from worn out pairs of jeans!  Now I have a gorgeous denim gored skirt. I used 1 1/2-inch wide elastic in the waist and designed it to sit on my hips rather than my true waist.  I’m so short waisted that if I wore bottoms at my actual waist…well, it wouldn’t be pretty!  I plan to reuse some of the original belt loops so I can wear a belt with it…let’s just say that a toddler and an elastic-waist skirt are a recipe for disaster! You can see a few places where I removed pockets before cutting my gores – adds character, don’t you think?  And a skirt without a pocket is simply ill-conceived, so I reused a pocket from one of Hubby’s pairs of jeans.  Now I can carry my cell phone when I run errands!

This idea has been brewing in my mind for a while now...simmering...taking shape and form.  I may be crafty, but I am no artist.  Nevertheless, I pulled out a piece of paper today and roughly sketched out my idea for a coordinating layered dress design. The idea is that it could all be worn at once for warmth, or just parts at a time on warmer days.  This is particularly useful in those climes where the temps change drastically in a 12-hour period.  You can take off or put on layers as the day progresses. Now that I have the basic idea down on paper, I will draft the patterns, pull out some fabric, and give it a try.