Look! Look at you! I mean me! It’s about time–I know. I’m sorry, me. I’ll do better this year, ‘kay?

So this is the second year in a row where I’ve prefaced many a January conversation with the phrase, “I think new year’s resolutions are kind of dumb, but x and y and z…”. Last year I really only said that I wanted to sew more, and I did–even by the end of the month I’d made a butchly plaid bathrobe for my butchly darling lady. And while I did grow, I think, in some of my sewingness abilities, I still left country miles’ worth of room for improvement. Some of which I want to address this year, or at least list*.

*maybe not until February.

I’ve always sort of told myself that a reason I like sewing is because you can dress yourself in fancy togs without having to pay the beaucoup dolores. Also because you can sew silk chiffon to shiny yellow vinyl, if you really want to, and your imagination is really the only limit to what wild apparel could be gracing the hangers in your closet. If not your fine self, that is, depending on your day job. It’s also a slight justification of mine for spending many, many hours scouring the style.com fashion show archives and having a purely obsessive relationship with luxury apparel websites. And until now, I’ve only ever exercised the first half of this equation; which is to say, I haven’t actually done anything, but doggone it, I think it’s time. So strap on your Onslow County fair roller coaster seat belt! I think we might need it.

See this pretty thing? I really like it. It’s an Alexander McQueen dress from the Fall 2006 collection (I think?), and I’ve ogled it for about a year now with only vague confidences: that I could ever wear something like it, that I might be able to spend that kind of dough on something so superfluous, and at the very end of the list if I’m being honest with myself, that I could ever, *ever* sew up something even slightly reminiscent of it myself. I looked for home sewing patterns that approximated the design so that I could be a baby step closer to it, but I don’t think that’s the right direction for me. The draping at the waist is going to be the hardest part, and that’s the aspect I can’t find any kind of instruction on–I’m pretty sure the neckline cowl is on-grain, and since I’m full busted I’d have to roughly eyeball the finished drapelines anyway. So what am I going to do? or at least attempt? Sit right there and give a good earful to this: I’m going to try to whip this baby up myself. I might use a pattern from the stash for the back of the dress, to give myself a sort of break, but that’s at least a couple days in the future. A rudimentary draping exercise yielded this, which actually has me a little hopeful? or at least slightly giving in to the thought that maybe I’m not insane, after all. Hey! I said maybe.

And this is what I played around for: to see if I could kinda sorta get the drapey lines I could so easily envision. I think it’s possible; I first tried folding a cowl at the neckline on the bias, but it was way too drapey and stretched out looking. I thought maybe I could pull up enough fabric in the skirt to have the bottom hem on the straight of grain, but it still didn’t look right:

So I guess I’ll have the hem of the dress be off grain…which could be all right as long as I let it hang and settle for a couple days? I guess? I’m also sort of wondering what the best option is for lining the dress: keep it a simple sheath style, or should I mimic the draping so it all wears the same? And I think I’ll have to either put in a cowl stay in the bodice, or else make the lining with that in mind; and then how should I finish off the cowl, too? do I need a waist stay? should I rethink cutting out the front as a single piece?

And most importantly: isn’t a little bit too late to be thinking about all this mess? Shouldn’t you be in bed watching futurama? Who would win in a battle to the death, Turanga Leela or Captain Kirk?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 4:07 am and is filed under Crafty Pants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.