Dress Upscale

Between Pintrest and various fashion blogs, it seems to me that upscaling clothing is the thing to do these days. Since I love sewing and FINALLY got a dress form (which I love) I thought that I should try my hand out at the upscale thing.

 

I did manage to make a dress without a pattern recently, but the pictures aren't on my laptop right now.

Last Saturday night I volunteered at a gala for our local orchestra. Everything was pretty fancy so I needed and even gown. My problem is that I like sewing costumes and none of them were appropriate for the occasion. My Mom had just gotten a few bags of clothes from a friend and she mentioned that there was a pretty black dress in there. When I first tried it on, I was less than optimistic. It was big. It had no form. It was cold.

But it had a pretty floral design on the front which kept me from throwing it back in the bag.

 

Before:   

 

I purposely intended this to be a horrible picture - which was easy to do. :-)

The dress was a size medium, I guessing about a 12/14.

Like my purple socks??? :-) They add such an element of charm to the photo.

Ick!

 

After:

I put the dress on my mannequin and took in the waistline to give it some more shape and form.

Then I went to the store and bought some white satin and some black lace. I then cut a slit into the dress and added a triangle of the satin with black lace overlay.

I really liked the way it looked.

 

Yes, it was cold, but I worked underneath a heating vent for most of the night, so it was all good.

The orchestra concert was amazing. They played several selections with a masquerade/carnival theme to them. They played a medley of "Phantom of the Opera" songs and I about flew to other universe it was so lovely.

The swing band afterwards was equally amazing.

It was so fun to watch the couples swing dance. There were several times that I wished my brother was there so we could go dance a couple songs, but swinging around by myself was still quite fun.

 

 

Had some photo booth fun with a friend.

 

It was quite a wonderful evening and I did get lots of compliments on my dress.

First upscale project: Success!