I don’t often make black dresses, or, at least, not all-black dresses (and since I’m not from New Zealand, I also have never made an All-Blacks dress). But every once in a while I overcome my reluctance and put one together, like this one:

Did you recognize our old friend Vogue 9929? Here’s the bodice:

I lined the whole thing with lightweight black batiste, so instead of regular bias binding, I used Wright’s narrow double-fold, and encased the bodice and binding fabric together, like so:

Here’s the side zip, I grade this about a C-:

I put piping at the waist, because with an all-black dress, what else can you do to jazz it up?

Here’s the back:

And the pocket, which is just the batiste, not the eyelet; I figured having pockets with holes, even little ones, was not the best move:

Whenever I make a black dress I cannot help but think of that scene from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where they’re on that ship for the band Disaster Area:

It’s the weird colour scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. Hey, what is this, some kind of galactic hyper-hearse?

(I think of this quote so often, in fact, that I’ve saved it to Findings for easy reference. I also think of it when I see this one particular all-black fixie in the Mission — not this one, but similar.)