A New Dress for Me {Finally}

Just around the corner in every woman's mind - is a lovely dress, a wonderful suit, or entire costume which will make an enchanting new creature of her. –Wilhela Cushman

This summer my youngest sister got married. The wedding was on July 31^st. On July 27^th I decided that I was making dresses for my sister {not the one getting married or the one who was the matron of honor}, my sister-in-law and me. It was a brilliant plan, really, but I was up to my elbows making vests for the little boys, which left me . . . not enough time to finish all three dresses. I knew it would be a stretch, but that I could finish two of them in the time I had, so I had to prioritize. Of course, I couldn't make my dress and leave one of my sisters without, so I decided that I'd make theirs and then worry about mine later. And later has come .

Sunday was the Primary Program and I was kind of in charge. It was the perfect opportunity for a new dress. A dress that was all cut out and waiting to be finished. As is my usual modus operandi, I procrastinated to the very last minute, finishing it at about 1:15 Saturday night/Sunday morning. [Editor's Note: part of my procrastination tactic this time was to spend three hours on Saturday with the Little Bugs sorting, de-junking, cleaning out and completely organizing their toy area, which turned out to be a brilliant bit of avoidance as it eliminated one of the major things on my list of boring, but necessary chores — wohoo ! The downside was that I stayed up way later that I really wanted to finishing up this dress.]

I have to pause here and note that although I got tons of compliments on my dress, I felt a little bit out of place when I looked around and saw everyone wearing their pretty fall-colored cardigans at church yesterday. You see, the temperatures have dropped and the leaves have changed and it is officially fall. It started raining late Saturday morning and pretty much hasn't let up. My shiny, springy, turquoise dress didn't really fit in with all the navy and burgundy and olive and pumpkin everyone else was wearing . I would have fit in much better here.

In garment construction, zippers are one of the most difficult things to conquer. I was one of those people who thought I'd be 30 and still calling my mom to come and put the zipper in for me. Lucky for me, my mom got tired of doing zippers for me so she showed me how way before I hit 20 . I have always wanted to do an invisible zipper. It seemed like such a magical and amazing thing to be able to pull off. The last few times I had to do zippers I picked up invisible zippers while I was getting my notions, but always chickened out right before going to the check-out and put them back and got the regular ones instead. But before I bought fabric and patterns for these dresses {clear back in July} I found a tutorial that made invisible zippers look do-able. I can't find the tutorial again, but as it turns out I didn't really need it because invisible zippers come with instructions {the very same instructions that the tutorial gave} and they are so easy! Way easier than regular zippers {ignore the gap at the top of the zipper — I made a change to the neckline after I'd put the zipper in and wasn't about to unpick}. I was able to line up my seams at the back on all three dress a lot better than with regular zippers {don't look too closely — it is still a little off}. And now I am in l♥ve with invisible zippers. Hooray for learning something new and an October finish!

One last thing: a close up of my 4" bronze, [faux] reptile skin, super pointy-toed stillettos. I think they'd do The Shoeologist proud.