Anniversary Dress: Part 1

Hello Chickadees!

On May 18th, the Mister and I will be celebrating our first wedding anniversary. Obviously this means that I need a new fancy dress! But it won't be as fancy as last year's dress, obviously. This is what it looked like. I still really love it.

 This is one of my favourite candid photos of our wedding day

So being a vintage inspired gal, I've been looking around for some inspiration for this new fancy dress. Shocking, I know!

I follow many vintage shops on Instagram, purely to drool over their gorgeous dresses. Side note: If you have a smart phone and love to be connected to the sewing community, get your cute little tushie signed up for Instagram! Great inspiration, super friendly people, and lots of sewing conversations going on. It's awesome. Let's become Instagram friends!

I stumbled upon this beauty from Shop Wanderlust a while back, and knew right away that this was THE INPIRATION dress. The sewing muses had spoken!

(Photo from Shop Wanderlust's Facebook page)

I wish I had been able to purchase this beauty before it sold. But that's the joy of sewing!

Now, since this dress is inspiration, and not something I want to copy stitch for stitch, here are the things I'm taking from this.

1) Colour scheme. I love the idea of a black top with a white bottom. So beautiful, and so classic. It reminds me of Lisa Freemont Street's gown from Rear Window

Photo from the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki

2) Silhouette. I love the style of a sleek fitted bodice with a full and fluffy circle skirt. It makes the waist look absolutely tiny, and accentuates my already hourglass figure.

3) Embellishments of sorts. I love the idea of lace or sequins on the circle skirt. I'm aiming to add some sort of embellishment, but it all depends on what time (and my rather finicky sewing machine) allows.

The Changes:
1) Sleeves. While I adore sleeves, they are not always practical, especially in May. Instead, I'll be using the Sultry Sheath pattern from Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing. I've sewn it up a few times before, and I know what sort of fitting adjustments I need already.

2) Fabric. In some of the other pictures of this dress, it appears that the skirt is made from chiffon. My persnickety sewing machine really hates sewing chiffon, and I do not want to risk ruining my material when I'm on a deadline. I'm going to try a tulle circle skirt (at least 3 layers of it) for the bottom bit. The bonus of using tulle- no tiny hems on long amounts of fabric!

I'm going shopping for the fabric tomorrow, so stay tuned for more of the Dress Saga!

Love,
Rachael