100Dresses / Erin_Sewing

The Hundred Dresses: Day 1

Erin25 Comments

So as y’all might already know, I have a new book coming out next week. It’s called The Hundred Dresses, and it’s all about dress archetypes. (It’s illustrated by the amazing Donna Mehalko.)

The book was inspired by the Eleanor Estes classic, also called The Hundred Dresses — and probably the #1 question I’ve gotten about my “Hundred” is whether it’s about dresses I’ve sewn myself. “Oh, no,” I said, “It’s about classic dresses, like the Flapper and the Airship Hostess! Anyway, I’m sure I don’t have a hundred dresses …”

And then I went and counted.

So it turns out that yes, I do have a hundred dresses that I’ve made myself, if I dig deep into the archives and also include some poor neglected “someday I’ll fix this” things that have never seen the light of day. So for the next hundred days, I’ll be back to posting a literal dress a day.

Ready? On to day 1!

stripe McCalls 3528 front view

This is McCalls 3528, and yes, it is very, very moire, isn’t it? Don’t look at it too long. It’s also extremely bulky, because it features GATHERED BOX PLEATS. Yep, there is a LOT of fabric there. (The fabric is a nice heavy shirting, not sure where I got it from.)

stripe McCalls 3528 front view

It looks like I might have not gotten the nap right on this one either, because the light hits it differently, depending on which side you look at. Oh well. The stripes match okay — that’s the important part, right?

I haven’t worn this very often because it’s a teeeeeensy bit big in the waist and the thought of taking all those pleats out, re-balancing them, re-GATHERING them, and then putting the dress back together just makes me want to lie down and take a nap.  It would be less work (or at least, FEEL like less work) to make it all over again from scratch, especially since the fabric (or a facsimile thereof) isn’t that hard to find.

So that’s Day 1, Dress 1! Stay tuned for more!

25 thoughts on “The Hundred Dresses: Day 1”

    • ooh, good idea! I only have skinny brightly-colored belts. I bet I need one of those stretchy 1980s numbers. 🙂

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  6. Yay yay yay! Just ordered the book! A hundred congratulations to you and thanks for all of the inspiration.

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  7. wow – 100 dresses. no words.
    i just finished 5 every day dresses, very simple stuff, but now a have to take a vacation from my sewing machine for a wile……
    congratulations to the new book!!!!!!

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  8. I’m with Joni–just wear it with a belt–it’s a cute dress. A dress every day for 100 days?! Hooray!!

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  9. OMG, you did a beautiful job matching those stripes. I second/third/fourth the suggestions to wear it with a belt. That dress deserves to be worn.

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  12. It makes me tired just thinking about the work that goes into the 100 posts with pictures for these! And just to increase the workload, here’s a suggestion: it would be nice if you’d include a guess at when you actually made each one. But either way, it’ll be an anticipated treat for my summer.

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