• Me Made Ensembles

Me Made Midweek #4

Today I’m wearing another dress I sewed in high school for Me Made Midweek. In fact, distinctly remember hemming it in Biology class. Why my teacher put up with that I’ll never know… in honor of that, today I’ll pretend that I’m off to school.

I had almost forgotten about this dress, but I was looking for something out of the ordinary to spice up my Me Made Midweek, and I remembered it was in my sewing cabinet. I’ve had it slated to be refashioned into a short sixties shift.

The dress was made from a Simplicity pattern. I know that it was in print about a decade ago, but I don’t have it with me so I don’t know the number. I also sewed bolero jacket from maroon velour to match. Unfortunately, it’s that’s still buried among my things in California, as far as I know.

I think this dress has done more sitting around than anything else. In California, it was often too warm for the bolero, but the dark colors didn’t look right as a bare-armed summer style. Also, it had some fit issues.

I remember that I flared the skirt panels when I was making this to try and give the dress more of a 1950s look. Unfortunately, I didn’t know a thing about pattern alteration at the time, so the dress starts belling out slightly above my waist and the skirt hangs strangely because of this.

It doesn’t look too bad with a belt and a petticoat, and wearing it over a shirt was a brainstorm I had this morning. This works very well! I won’t be reworking this dress into something else after all. However, I think I’d like to alter it so that it has a waist seam. Then I can tweak the skirt panels so they’ll hang a bit better.

Now if only I had a chance to search for the bolero…