Monday, January 23, 2012

A Night at the Speakeasy

This past Friday, Mike and I went to The Hamilton for their "Night at the Speakeasy".  Basically, I wanted an excuse to have fancy cocktails and make a 20's style dress.  Look how pretty The Hamilton is:

Photobucket

I Googled some pictures of 20's dresses and scoured my pattern stash for anything with a loose bodice and a tiered skirt.  I didn't have any tiered skirt action, but I figured that would be easy enough to create without a pattern.  I found two 1960's dress patterns with the type of bodice I was looking for and made a hybrid of the two.  Unfortunately there was no time to order fabric, so I had to make do with this poly chiffon from Joanne's, which I underlined in white.  I wanted it to still be sheer, but not completely see-through.

Photobucket

Like a good little sewer, I made a muslin first. I used one pattern for the scoop neckline:

Photobucket

And another for the perfect darts.

Photobucket

Not bad! Kind of shapeless, but I figured we'd be in business once I made it in the chiffon and attached the skirt.

Photobucket

Boy, was I wrong. The poly chiffon was HORRIBLE to work with and was shredding like crazy and stiff and not draping nicely. The worst part was, stains kept appearing out of nowhere.

Photobucket

Photobucket

I used bias tape for the armholes for the first time and that turned out nicely. I used a flesh color, and you could not see it through the outside of the garment, so that is good. The real disaster was when I tried to do the skirt. The fabric was shredding like crazy and would not gather and was a bunchy, horrible disaster. I can't even bring myself to show you a photo of it.

So, I turned to Plan B: Buy something on eBay and beg the seller to overnight it to me. I found this stunner with 5 minutes left on the auction, and I scored it for a song! Even with the overnight shipping, it was well within what I was willing to pay.

Photobucket


Photobucket


I have to admit, the whole appeal of this event was getting dressed up. I actually had more fun at the pre-party at my house. I had 5 friends over and we had appetizers and Brandy Old Fashioneds and listened to 20's records on the Victrola.

Here's a slew of photos for your viewing pleasure.

Photobucket


Photobucket


Photobucket


Photobucket


Photobucket

Photobucket

1 comment:

  1. It's good to have a back-up plan! Are you going to re-attempt the initial dress idea again sometime?

    ReplyDelete

Followers