Emma’s Sewing Adventures 1.0 – The Blue Dress

Hey there Earthlings! Today I am here with a post about my latest sewing adventure, which was this blue dress (I’m going to make a little info page about my different “Adventures” series). It is made from a solid blue fabric I bought at Ikea this past summer, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it until December, which is when I initially started working on it. I started cutting out the pieces for the top, and I started sewing them together, but then I had some troubles with my sewing machine, that are now fixed, and I put the project away for a while until a few weeks ago, which was when I had kind of re-discovered my love for sewing, especially hand sewing. I had sewn a pair of garters, which I later turned into a garter belt, and a pentagram harness. Both made out of the same silver glitter elastic band as the straps on this dress.

When those two projects were finished I decided to pick up the pieces for this dress again, and I began to work on it again. Though, it is very different from what I originally had in mind when I started working on this dress back in December. The top, and most of the dress as a whole, is sewn by hand, of course including the sequins.

Now, about the sequins. Sequins are in theory very pretty, but they are not very practical, they get hurt easily and it’s easy to get things stuck in them, but the main issue I have with these ones are the paint. Or dye, I’m not sure. The colour is supposed to be black, but the actual plastic is silver and just “painted” black, which is very frustrating, because as soon as they get a teeny tiny bit scratched, the paint comes off. When I ordered these sequins, they were all on an elastic string that I was initially gonna use for my garters, but then I found the elastic, and the paint has come off where the string laid on every single one of these tiny plastic discs. I am very much hoping that all the paint comes off when I wash this dress, but I am afraid it won’t. But we’ll see.

As you can see, I have a row of sequins all around the bottom hem of the skirt, which isn’t the most noticeable thing in the world, but I do think it’s a very nice detail that kind of ties the whole dress together as one piece, and I’m very happy with it. As you may also notice, I used a grey thread when I sewed these ones on, because I didn’t want black, or blue as I used in the top, thread to show if the paint where to completely disappear, and I do think that grey on black looks better than how the black on silver may have looked.

The skirt itself is made out of three pieces of fabric, one big and two smaller ones half the big one’s size. The skirt is not in one big piece because my fabric wasn’t long enough for it, since I used the original  140 cm width that the fabric is made in, as the length of one piece, if you understand. I also wanted the back piece to be in two, because I wanted a zipper in the back, and I prefer putting a zipper in that way.

I also gathered a skirt for the first time when making this, which was proven to be difficult. I actually ended up sewing the seam by hand, because I think I ripped both the machine-sewn seams off in four places when I tried to gather it. How do you people do it?

But yes, I’m fairy sure that was it about this dress, now I’m gonna go and make some dinner, because it’s almost 8.30 pm and I haven’t eaten yet. See you soon!

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