“glad rags— clothes for a special occasion; one’s best clothes.”
I certainly draw more dresses (or, as I like to call them, “glad rags”) than I make, but I do, when not terribly encumbered with schoolwork and/or writing, enjoy sewing.
I am on a sort of a long-term personal search for the perfect dress, and each one I make I think will be “the one”.
Of course they aren’t.
However, I have turned out some things I feel rather good about. The first dress was my first major sewing project as an inexperienced novice—I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It took, what, a year? Something like that. I used to watch the fabulous Jane Austen adaptations, and this dress is in the Regency style. It is lined with white batiste, with a lavender cotton on the outside, and has three black flower-shaped buttons with rhinestones in the center to close the back. It is all appropriate to the period, minus the machine-stitching! It has, in fact, been remade by myself (what you see is its current state), as on my first attempt I gathered the waist too much at the bust and messed the thing up, having no idea what I did wrong. A few years of experience later, I retackled it—I made a new bodice from scraps (it used to have a higher neck and long sleeves) using the pattern pieces for the “a” dress in the pattern packet, having first made the “b”.
For those curious, it was with the Simplicity pattern 4055.
What dress do you think I should make next? Have you made something you particularly like?
~Phlox