Saturday Dress Challenge

Sometimes I like to challenge myself to small feats. Last Saturday was Spring Gallery Night in Fort Worth and I wanted to have a new dress ready to wear. I had weeks to accomplish this but had spent so much time on pattern development that I had not sewn a real, wearable garment in over a month. So Friday night, I issued the challenge - go to bed by midnight, get up early, and finish a dress before 6:00 pm.

I used the same pattern that I used for my wedding dress, with a few tweaks including three-quarter sleeves and pointed collar instead of peter pan. I didn't actually get started until 10:45 am, because I wanted to finish a muslin I was too tired to finish the night before; this was probably a mistake. By about 3:00 pm, I was pretty sure I was going to fail miserably, but I pushed myself and somehow managed to finish by 5:58 pm. Then I had a shot of tequila and jumped in the shower. Gallery Night with my husband was a lot of fun!

Overall, I was very pleased with how my dress turned out, though I could have done a little better job with the zipper and hem, both of which I had to tackle in less than an hour. Zippers are just a pain in the ass and I cannot hand sew the hem of a full skirt in 20 minutes, so that had to be done on the machine. On Sunday I tore those out, and will give them the attention they deserve this week. I bought enough of this fabric to make two dresses, so I hope to have my first dress available for sale soon...

It has also become clear that I am losing the most time laying out and cutting the fabric. I need to find ways to improve the process - a bigger cutting table certainly would help!