Busy Bee & Shoulder Injury

Well, Sunday (and I only managed to post this Monday!) has arrived and as you can tell, no photos, no post.  On the surface, it would appear that I have been a good for nothing, sewing, photographing, blogging slacker, but my silence is deceiving. If you've judged me thusly, then you have miss judged and you should be ashamed of yourself!  (Do you see how I did that?  I made YOU feel bad about MY lack of posts?  I am a ninja.)  In reality, I have sewn 3, YES 3! items of clothing, 2 of which are pretty much self drafted and one that is altered from a pattern.


All three of these items were hard core, under pressure, sewing into the time that the event has started.  Shame on me.  In the end, things mostly worked out.  Oh ya, and I should mention, last Saturday (not yesterday but one week ago) I separated my shoulder in my first ever, bonified derby bout.  I knew I had done it but I kept playing.  However, now I am paying and a lot of my pattern drafting & sewing occurred with a very sore right shoulder.  Not something I recommend.  Anyways, on to the pretty!


Today, I'll feature my athletic banquet dress.  To remind, this was the plan:

My intention was to make the skirt shape more pencil and less 'narrow A'

I used a beautiful navy with cream polka dot stretch cotton from Dressew that I've been stashing for probably 2 years.  

It featured a Cup selector, princess seam bodice AMAZING fit.  I've been jonzing for an amazingly fitted princess seam bodice sloper so I took this very rushed opportunity to make one...because... you know....there is nothing like rushed sewing to try out something you've had little success with in the past!


True to form, I had little success.  The bust curve was up in my upper chest region:

What you don't see is the 3" panel I added at the shoulder seam (which in effect lowered it about 1.5") to LOWER this bust curve to this point!!!!!

Angry and desperate I set about drafting my own dress.  A simple bateau neck bodice with an attached (at the true waist) pencil skirt with a back zip.  Don't even ask which pattern I used because, unbelievably I didn't own a simple sheath dress pattern!

Regardless, here are the results.  I was 20 mins late for the banquet but only missed the pre-amble.  I machine stitched the hem which I am not happy with and will redo but other than that, I really like how it turned out. 

The red belt is at the waist seam.  I used cream piping around the neck and arm holes.

(here I was giving my husband sass because he scoffed at me for telling him to make sure I looked skinny!)

Here I managed to line up the bodice & skirt darts, quite by accident I assure you!

Wiggle shaped pencil skirt.

Stretch cotton is a girl's wiggle dress' best friend.  Comfortable and cool all night long.  I wore it for Father's day as well.  Hubby said I looked classy and I was pleased with that feedback.  More tomorrow about my 'pin up' outfit for my roller derby team's pub nite fundraiser.