Category: 100Dresses

The Hundred Dresses: Day 20

Erin11 Comments

Wow, I can’t believe we’re a fifth of the way to the end …

Here is another dress from the same pattern as yesterday’s (Simplicity 5723):

Camo Simplicity 5723

(I blogged about this one last year, with worse pictures.)

Here’s the pocket, self-lined:

Camo Simplicity 5723

The back (Simplicity 5723 has a center back seam, which is a little bit of a pain):
Camo Simplicity 5723

The bodice/neck (I really love this fabric):
Camo Simplicity 5723

And the zipper, which is a definite C- minus on the McKean Scale of Zipper Eptness:
Camo Simplicity 5723

I generally end up wearing this dress with a cardigan (in teal, brown, or that mustardy-gold), a mustard-colored belt, and brown ballet flats.

(Today’s rollovers from Camopedia, which may be my new favorite website …)

I keep forgetting to add that there are several spreads from The Hundred Dresses up on “Inside the Book” at Amazon, if you’re looking for a sneak peek!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 19

Erin6 Comments

Today’s dress is one of my favorites:

brick pink Simplicity 5723

I blogged about it last  year (there’s a picture of me in it at that post, with bonus surprise lexicographers!) It’s from this pattern, whichI really like:
Simplicity 5723

Even though the finished skirt is nowhere near as full as the pattern envelope would suggest. And anyway, I put pockets in it (copying those of Simplicity 1577, natch):

brick pink Simplicity 5723

I’m very happy with how the print matched at the waistline:
brick pink Simplicity 5723

The zipper here is about a C+. I have come up with an invisible zipper grading scale, would you like to hear it? After the picture:
brick pink Simplicity 5723

Zipper Grading System:

A zipper: can’t see it, truly invisible except for the pull, waist seam perfectly matched;

B zipper: puckering or  indication that zipper exists (besides the pull); no zipper tape visible;

C zipper: zipper tape visible;

D zipper: unwearable, must be ripped out and redone;

F zipper: makes entire dress unfixable, might as well cut the thing up for quilt squares.

Here’s the sleeve, finished with bias binding:
brick pink Simplicity 5723

And the back. I’m just going to believe that I don’t look from the back what my dresses look like from the back — my dress form is very persnickety and always catches the material across the back:
brick pink Simplicity 5723

Here’s a picture of the fabric scale, just because I found it in my Flickr set:
rose/brick hash print

 

I really like this dress because: it fits well (dress form back view notwithstanding); it’s formal enough to give a talk in but comfortable enough to enjoy myself in; and also, I like that brick.jpgnk AND broken plaids. A twofer! I usually wear it with a black cardigan and penny loafers.

And in The-Hundred-Dresses-The-Book news — if you’ve already read it, would you consider leaving a review somewhere? (Maybe Amazon?) It’s definitely one of the things that people use to decide whether they will choose The Hundred Dresses over, say, this one.

The Hundred Dresses: Day 18

Erin2 Comments

Here’s today’s dress:
Simplicity 1577, no collar

This is another collarless Simplicity 1577 — when I had to do the collar amputation on the denim one, I thought, “Hey, what if I did this on purpose?” and voilà:
Simplicity 1577, no collar

The bias binding for the neckline is a slight bit lumpy. The fabric is a lighter twill, so it showed through more than I thought it would (better image of the fabric below). I’m very happy with the pocket lining (it’s Liberty, natch):
Simplicity 1577, no collar

Here’s the back where you can see exactly the spot I missed while pressing this before taking pictures:
Simplicity 1577, no collar

And the zipper, which is truly terrible, a C- at best. For some reason this dress came out smaller than I thought it would so I have to go back and undo both side seams and cheat them out a bit, and do the zipper “right” in the process. Needless to say this has not happened yet. At all.
Simplicity 1577, no collar

I tend to wear this dress in the winter (it’s warm) with black boots and a black sweater (or brown boots and a brown sweater). It’s a good traveling dress, too, since I made the pockets extra-deep. Now if only I managed to get this on to the top of the pile for fixing …

 

The Hundred Dresses: Day 17

Erin6 Comments

Careful readers of A Dress A Day (are there any other kind? I think not) will have seen this dress twice before; it’s definitely one of my favorites:

alphabet-print Butterick 7513

The buttons are probably my favorite part — they’re covered with another black&white alphabet fabric at a different scale:
alphabet-print Butterick 7513

There are a lot of things I’ll do differently when I make this pattern again. For instance, I don’t think the placket edges need to be edgestitched:
alphabet-print Butterick 7513

And when I first put in the zipper, I started the top too low and the fabric ripped at the stress point — you can see the repair below (I also replaced the zipper):
alphabet-print Butterick 7513

Here’s the back, it’s off-center on my dress form but not in real life, really.
alphabet-print Butterick 7513

This is from Butterick 7513:

Butterick_7513

Honestly, I don’t know why I don’t make this all the time, it’s super-comfortable and not very demanding. It might be because I tend to shy away from center-front skirt seams, but I’m getting over that. Maybe I’ll give this one another shot soon …

And in Hundred-Dresses-The-Book news, did I already link to this nice HuffPo slideshow? Check it out!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 16

Erin8 Comments

Here’s another version of the W3 dress:

polka-dot W3 dress

It is surprisingly hard to tell the back from the front with this dress pattern (and this print!) but here is what I am pretty sure is the back:
polka-dot W3 dress

I made this dress in an extreme hurry because I had gotten it into my head that I needed a slightly vintagey, yet cool and comfortable dress to go out dancing in one Saturday night. I got this idea about  4 pm, and the dancing started around 9. So it was a bit of a rush job, as you can see by the not-quite-matching of the print at the waist, here:
polka-dot W3 dress

That shoulder pleat, though, I’m still really liking it:
polka dot W3 dress shoulder detail

Side zip? B+ this time.
polkadot W3 side zip

Oh, and a sneak preview of a dress (or two) that’s coming next week, as it was hanging in my hotel room waiting to be hemmed:

sneak peek!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 15

Erin16 Comments

Brand new pattern! This is Simplicity 4003 — another half-size pattern, or as I like to call them, squishy-middle patterns (they’re bigger in the waist than non-half-size patterns):

Simplicity 4003

I was drawn to this pattern by the simple-looking skirt and the nice collar, but I had absolutely no intention of making that welt chest pocket. (Let’s just get that out of the way up front.)

Simplicity 4003 city print

It has a little bit of a 1940s vibe all made up that it doesn’t have on the pattern envelope, doesn’t it?

I really liked this fabric, too, as an abstract cityscape. The buttons are nothing special, although the buttonholes turned out pretty well:

Untitled

Here’s the collar, which has a decent roll to it:

Simplicity 4003 city print

Side zip, much improved, I think you’ll find:

Simplicity 4003 city print

And back view:

Simplicity 4003 city print

And sleeve. Sigh. The sleeve caps did NOT want to go in flat. Despite much basting and pressing and easing and cursing, this was the best I could do:

Simplicity 4003 city print

I’m definitely going to make this dress again; it’s really comfortable and sews up well in quilting cotton (which is what this is). I’ll probably add just a bit more fullness to the skirt (by the lazy expedient of adding an inch or two at the front gathers, unless someone has a better, less slapdash idea?) and spend more time on those blasted sleeve caps …

Editorial query: do people want me to post sources for the mouseover text on the pictures (when it’s not just straight-up jokes)? Almost everything is searchable with Your Favorite Search Engine, but would it be helpful to include them here, or would it ruin the fun (such as it is)?

The Hundred Dresses: Day 14

Erin7 Comments

I could have sworn I’ve posted this one before, but I can’t find it now. (Obviously, my tagging needs some work.) Anyway, yes, another 9929, this time in a border print!

red border print Vogue 9929

I’m pretty sure I bought this fabric on eBay with absolutely no idea what I was going to do with it. (As the bromide has it, leap and the net will be there, or, in  my case, buy the fabric and the pattern will appear. I’m waiting on quite a few patterns right now …)

Here’s the salient part, the border:

red border print Vogue 9929

I really do love those houndstoothy things. If I were doing this again (and by “this” I mean making another border print 9929 — I’ve been reading a lot of Javascript lately and have been fascinated by issues of “this”-scope anaphora) I would not just have the hem and the edge of the border coterminous, as easy as that is — I’d use some hem bias facing to give it a little weight. (Oh, and I *am* going to make another 9929 border print sometime before the fall, because I bought this fabric especially to do it with.)

Here’s the back:

red border print Vogue 9929

Here’s the neck facing — one of my favorite things about the neck bias on the 9929s is finding out how it will look when it’s attached. I don’t do much, if anything, to try to plan it out:

red border print Vogue 9929

Here’s the zipper, another “C” effort. Since I’ve made these last two 9929s I’ve gotten a new zipper foot, which has helped quite a bit (I think):

red border print Vogue 9929

In Hundred-Dresses-The-Book news, there was a VERY  nice review in the Chicago Tribune! Check it out if you’re so inclined. They called it “a refreshing sashay through the history and pop culture of the dress.” (“Refreshing Sashay” is now the name of my new band …)

The Hundred Dresses: Day 13

Erin7 Comments

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:

black eyelet 9929

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

black eyelet 9929

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:

black eyelet 9929

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

black eyelet 9929

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:

black eyelet 9929

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:

black eyelet 9929

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.)

The Hundred Dresses: Day 12

Erin7 Comments

Today’s dress is a survivor dress. It’s a Simplicity 1577, made in mid-weight dark blue (almost black) denim:

Denim 1577

But wait, you say. Didn’t that Simplicity 1577 pattern have a collar? Why yes, it did:

Denim 1577

And I did a nice Liberty-print undercollar for it, too:

Denim 1577

And the pockets:

Denim 1577

But unfortunately, I didn’t think to use Fray-Check and the collar raveled pretty much immediately. (Moral: always use Fray-Check
on raveling fabrics!) No worries, I just took it off and finished the neck edge with some bias binding.

But that’s not the only reason why this dress is a survivor — it also made it through a bike accident I had in SF last year. Here’s where I landed in the street — my keys were in the pocket and keys+acceleration+denim+tarmac = abrasion damage:

Denim 1577

I was pretty lucky — the driver stopped, I had no injury other than a few scrapes (I was wearing a helmet, of course!) and I even got right back on my bike and rode the four more miles to my meeting. (For the SF-curious, this was in the traffic circle on Townsend … which I walk my bike through now.)

Here’s the back — you’d never guess anything had ever happened, would you?

Denim 1577

I still wear this all the time, even with the little bit of fraying on the skirt panel (and a bit of fraying up near the top of the pocket, although I can’t blame that on the bike accident). It’s nice to be reminded both that 1) you’re tougher than you think and 2) be careful!

 

The Hundred Dresses: Day 11

Erin4 Comments

You’ve seen this fox dress before, but here it is again, in more close-up detail:
Fox Vogue 9929
neck binding:
Fox Vogue 9929
side zip:
Fox Vogue 9929
quizzical fox in the pocket:
Fox Vogue 9929
and the back:
Fox Vogue 9929
and the matching Tattly:
Tattly fox tattoo

 

The fabric is called Fox Frolic (by Aneela Hoey for Moda).

I really liked this fabric when I first made the dress, and I still like the dress now, but I am thinking foxes are getting, as the kids say today, played out. (There’s a LOT of fox stuff on Etsy, which is always the first sign.) Besides, you know I have to declare my allegiance to the hedgehog side …

Oh! And if you’re wondering which of the book-Hundred-Dresses this eleventh dress would be, it’s Matt Smith! Wait, no, I mean, it’s a Dirndl, about which I say: “The Dirndl managed to be simultaneously practical and attractive. It’s close-fitting, but the deep armholes and free skirt allow for easy movement.”

And! Antipodean friends, the book was reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald today!