Why on earth does anyone over the age of six ever wear puffed sleeves? I can't think of anything less flattering or more irritating or more infantilizing, short of a hospital gown.

Look at these helpless young women, forced to endure these horrors. You see how they're both looking off to the side? They're waiting until their "handler" is distracted, so they can make a run for it. And the first thing they'll do, once they're over the fence and have outrun the dogs, is rip off those sleeves. Even if they have to use a razor blade "sterilized" in a match flame.

Anyway, if these sleeves don't make you cringe like watching someone take a needle in the eye, click on the image. You can buy it for less than $7, including shipping, as long as you're willing to sign over your immortal soul. What? I feel that strongly about the evil of these sleeves. (Picture me making the sign of the cross in an ostantatious manner.)

This dress, above, is this dress:

And it works! It worked so well, in fact, that now I want to sew it over and over again (this happens to me a lot — when I have a hammer, everything looks like a nail).

I think I'll sew it in this, next:

(Except mine is lawn, not the twill in this photo, which I ganked from the internet because I am too lazy to photograph more than one thing of an evening.)

So we can consider the concept as proved, and move on to implementation. It actually went together wonderfully; all the seams matched without too much tsuris, and I only had to resort to the first tier of expletives to get the zipper in. I did forget to put a pocket in the side skirt seam, but that's an easy alteration on this dress as it has a back zip, not a side one. I let out the side seams by 2/3 inch, total, and it fits EXACTLY.

I'm still not sold on the color of this dress (is it orchid? lavender? ashes of roses?) even though I wore this on television (!, and no, it wasn't for Dress A Day) last night, with a yellow vee-neck cardigan sweater. I'm thinking I might have looked like a big Easter egg, but I'm too chicken (no pun intended) to go watch the TiVo and see.

Even though I made it up in a solid, I think this is really a pattern for prints, if I can match the skirt seams well. The large expanse across the bodice is better for showing off a gorgeous print than a fussy vee, collared, or buttoned neckline would be. And after I finish making up the car print, I have another one in mind …. I wonder how many of these I can make before it gets silly?

I adore this fabric, but it's mismatched. Don't get me wrong — the design lines coordinate with the fabric motifs expertly. (The curved line under the bust is genius, and check out the matching at the shoulders and upper arms.) It's the fabric and the dress itself that are mismatched. A neck tie? All those pleats in the skirt? The cuffs and placket pieced out of the stripey parts? It's done really well, but just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.

I wish I had yards and yards of this fabric. But there's no way I'd make up something this fussy with it!

It's B34/W24, click on the image to go to the eBay auction. The designer of this dress, Helen Rose, also designed Grace Kelly's wedding dress (below), which is part of the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (and which you can't really see in this picture, but which I place here anyway, for contrast).

I'm enjoying myself immensely imagining Princess Grace politely declining this dress (even though, of course, she'd look great in it). "Helen, dear," she'd say softly. "Maybe something a little … simpler? A bateau neckline, perhaps? Fewer pleats?"