Aug 25

Aug 25 seersucker dresses

sometimes it's fun to ask the girls what they want in a dress and make it. other times i ignore what they are saying and make what i want.

this is an example of the latter.

when I took nora and etta to the fabric depot last spring they said they wanted dresses that 'looked like boogers'. what i heard was a request for yellow seersucker dresses.

at the time i was pinning a lot of mad men inspired style. (note i wasn't watching mad men, after four years working on a wall street trading floor with 40 guys i find the misogynistic culture of sterling cooper a little hard to swallow. someday it will make for a good neflix binge though.) wanting the dresses to have a vintage feel i decided to do another iteration of the tinny dress from straight grain again (remember my first time around was the twirly dresses) but with a few changes.

i did a pleated rather than circle skirt, which allowed me to do a double fold three inch hem.
i lined the whole thing (instead of just the bodice) with a rich white cotton sateen that may have been a fitted sheet that ripped a few weeks earlier.
i omitted the sleeves and hand stitched the arm holes.
i added a loop for the possibility of a future sash.

the result was a girly summer dress with a vintage feel. though personally i think it has more of a kim from 'bye bye birdie' than sally draper from mad men vibe. but that's probably for the best though i hear sally was kind of a strange character.