An Enhanced Dress

Near the end of 2023, I used some fabric I really liked to make a dress that turned out rather short.  At the time I thought the length wouldn't bother me.

I was wrong.

Sometimes I wore a skirt under it for decorative length, but, mostly, I looked at it and despaired.  I liked the print too much to let it go, and it took until just a few days ago to realize that I could remove that pink contrast at the bottom of the skirt and add something longer. 

This revelation snowballed, and I ended up adding a lot of other things to the dress, too.

 

 I could have added more, but...didn't wanna.

The first addition choice was the strip of printed plaid and floral fabric.  I suspect the main purple chintz had come from Mom's stash, but I know the floral strip fabric did.  I had liked it so much as a kid, and decided, in high school, that it would make a fantastic skirt.  I didn't really know how to sew at that time, and Mom wasn't sewing anymore, so, somehow, a friend's mom ended up volunteering to make this hypothetical skirt.

She never did.

When I asked for the fabric back, I found that she'd already prepared it, by cutting it to length, and she'd made those cuts right along the edges of the stripes (the print alternated between the plaid floral stripe and a much larger stripe made up of flowers on a tone-on-tone floral background.)  While I didn't know anything about sewing at the time, I want to say that I immediately realized that that had been a bad idea, because I recognized that hemming the edge of the stripe, or sewing it to the waistband, would result in obscuring one edge of it, making it asymmetrical.

I was sore about that for decades.  I had finally decided that I'd cut the fabric apart for patchwork, so it was near the top of the fabric stash when I started this project, and looking in the stash for potential prints to mix to make an all-new, wider bottom band.

The stripe with the tonal floral background seemed like it would be just the right width...but...that tonal floral background was also very brown.  Lovely, but brown.  I decided I'd maybe use the narrower plaid background stripe, if I could find another print to mix with it.

I ha some possibilities, but, when I pinned the stripe to the skirt to help visualize things, I thought that it coordinated with the original pink contrast fabric very nicely, so I decided to go with that. I shortened the pink strip from the top, keeping the folded not-exactly-a-hem bottom, and making the skirt about 21", which was the skirt length I'd ended up with in the last high-waist pull-over dress I made.

It was still too short—not as short as it had been, but shorter than I wanted.  That was when I realized the bodice was shorter than I'd eventually standardize for this generally scoop-neck version of Fake Burda 6401, and the skirt length had been expecting otherwise.

Well, OK, I'll add more.  But.  I didn't really want to sew anything to the bottom of that folded pink—actually, no, I was willing to use some wide cluny lace, but I didn't have enough of it.  (An upcoming project had made me very aware of how little lace I had in lengths suitable for very full skirts.  I have placed an order to rectify that.)  I figured I could sew something to one of the seam allowances where the strips attached to things.  I hadn't top stitched yet, so that was going to be a pretty easy option, if I could figure out what to use.

I started with more print fabric, but noticed the ultra wide black and gray gingham eyelet that a friend had given me ages ago.  I had previously used a lot of it in an underdress that I ended up never wearing and giving away (in retrospect, I wish I'd cut the trim off to re-use later, because the rest of the dress was nothing great.  Ah, well.)  The wide gingham eyelet was so wide that I aligned the top points of the highest row of embroidery with the edge of the seam allowance when I sewed it on, and then cut off the extra with the serger when I finished that seam allowance.

Then I top stitched and everything was wonderful!

Here's a view of how wide the eyelet is. 

I did hesitate to use that eyelet, because I don't have a lot of it left, and because there's no gray or black anywhere else in the fabrics.  I reasoned that adding gray and black by using it would make the overall dress more compatible with potential shoes and legwear.  Plus, I'd already used two treasured fabrics in this, so why not another?

 

Then I looked at the strip of black and gray gingham that had been cut off, and thought maybe I could put it up by the neckline, to bring the black and gray out of just the lowest layer.  Maybe a ruffle?  No—maybe an excuse to try making Rosenrusche, especially after Martha Moore Porter's debut video showing how she makes it.

 

 

 And that led to adding some other precious stash trims.

While I didn't mind the hand sewing necessary in making the Rosenruche/box pleat trim, I wasn't inclined to attach it with hand sewing.  I machine stitched it down the center, going over (roughly) the original line of stitching, and using a large ball point needle to move things out of the way (mostly) that I didn't want caught in that.  I tucked a length of antique, slightly-gathered lace under that, sewing the header close to the Rosenrusche attachment stitch.  Then I added the jacquard ribbon, attempting to ease it into a suitable curve as I sewed, but it didn't really get there, so I steamed it...enthusiastically...to encourage it toward a proper curve so the neckline would at least come close to laying flat.

The center back is a bit of a mess, because of the way I finished the Rosenrusche ends isn't the most contained (not helped by the gingham having a high polyester content) and because the antique lace wasn't quite long enough.  I had a few inches left of the jacquard, and considered making a bow from it, to place over the center back and, if not hide, then at least distract from all that.  I might still...

I think the reason I forgot about the bow was because, at one point, I was considering adding beads to the centers of the gathers on the Rosenrusche, and, when I decided I was not going to do that, it also deleted the bow plans.  It, y'know, definitely wouldn't be the first thing I went back and changed about this dress, would it.

I had also considered adding trim around the fabric strips on the skirt.  I decided against it because I like how clean the joins are, and, also, that previously-mentioned dearth of longer lengths of lace.

I could definitely go back and add lace once I got it, but I do like how clean it currently is.  Not that the rest of the dress is anywhere near an exercise in minimalism.  Like, I also don't think I'd be inclined to add appliqués, either, but...that could change in a few years...