It's My Party.

It's my birthday! 

There's not a lot exciting about birthdays in your thirties. No major milestones. No new privileges. So, to mark my thirty second birthday I decided to treat myself to something special and frivolous; I sewed a party dress. 

I don't have a lot of reasons to wear frilly dresses, so I tend not to sew them often, but I do have some special occasion fabrics stashed away that deserve to be sewn into garments. When I initially started shopping my stash, it was my plan to use a length of blue and white vintage dotted tulle for the skirt of this dress. I searched for a coordinating bodice fabric and found a length of vintage lace. 

I didn't want the design on the lace to get lost or blend into my lining fabric, so I chose to use a nude tone cotton to underline. I gathered my skirt fabric and set it aside. Then, I got to work sewing my bodice. When I'd finished, I was pleased with the way my bodice looked, however, I didn't like the way it paired with my tulle. Fortunately, I was able to reconfigure my original plan; I had enough lace to gather into a suitably swishy skirt. 

The really fun thing about sewing with fancy fabrics is having the opportunity to play with some different sewing techniques. On my skirt, I used an overlapped lace seaming method. This method gives the illusion that the lace pattern is continuous around the entire skirt and helps the seams appear mostly invisible and blend into the skirt.

Not only is this dress sewn from vintage fabrics, it's sewn using vintage McCall's 5842. This was my second time sewing this pattern so I didn't make a muslin before starting. My bodice is a little roomy, but it's not overly so, and I don't feel the need to tweak it any. 

It was fun and a little silly dressing up with no apparent reason today. We took a stroll downtown for something sweet to eat and walked around town. I felt overdressed amongst the crowds of people in t-shirts, but it also made me feel just a little bit special, and that's what birthdays are all about, right?