resurrecting the dress

the final word is this: we are going back to the original dress. after all of that. the lace and the internet hunting and the trip to LA (although we needed to do that for r's vest, anyway) and the silk and everything... i'm scrapping the lace dress idea.

why? well, for a couple of reasons. one big one is that it's really more involved construction than i initially realized. the kind that, if not done juuuuust right, will really look off. another huge thing is that i never found a pattern that really came close to the envisioned dress. i thought i had, but it really didn't measure up in production. had i decided on this dress months and months back, that might not have been a problem. we might have had enough time to figure out the details. but i'm getting married in about three weeks and such time does not exist. and lastly, i guess the most important, is that i just couldn't ever get the first dress out of my head. i scrapped it in the first place for the same reason i gave for this one: no pattern. lots of basic, simple dress patterns but nothing with that cut, that neckline. and what i really wanted was that dress, so it started to just make sense to go with something else. but the more i got into lace and silk, the more i realized how much i hadn't wanted exactly that in the first place. the dress we were going for was still ultra-simple, but i wanted even simpler. and when i finally finished r's vest, i kept picturing the original dress next to it. i still wanted that one. but the magic happened when, poring over vintage pattern websites again, i actually found it! as a refresher, here again was the original dress:you might wonder what it is that i love so much. that's hard to say. i love the simplicity of it, the way it isn't about any particular detail, it's just perfect as it is. and the mock turtleneck. and the shortness of it - i love those two things combined. i think even the color made me like it initially, the soft winter white as opposed to the bleach white. and i think, mostly, that it's just very much me. but the dress patterns we were finding were just off. no turtleneck (and it's hard to just make that up), or the seams were all off, or the front was constructed in pieces, or there was a slit at the neck... just stuff that really changed the look of it. and then this!! in my size!!

i was sooo damn happy. i don't know if A was, since i've changed this on her so many times now. having had so much success with r's vest, i think if i was gonna do the whole show over again, i'd want to make the dress. as it is, i told her i wanted to help, because i really do want to have a hand in making my own dress. i have so much more confidence in my sewing abilities now. so she got the pattern yesterday and i'll be there in just over a week to try to pull this out of our hats less than two weeks before the wedding! thanks, momspatterns. way to get me back on track!