Week 1: The Dickens Dress, Modified

I'm off to a good start! Chris and I were planning on going to Dickens Fair on 11/26 but I needed to make a few modifications to my Dickens dress since it was a wee too snug along the center front. I didn't want any gaposis to show so first I made a quick cover-up belt that would hide any gaposis along the waistline:

This was made and modified from the very cute Simplicity 5442 pattern by Martha McCain, now sadly out of print. I didn't have quite enough stash fabric to make the bow according to the pattern, so I just kept fiddling with it until I liked the way it looked. The belt is one of those "don't you dare look inside!" numbers, complete with raw edges and Velcro!

I also made a modesty panel to go down the center front so that if there was going to be any gaposis between the hooks and eyes it would be the same fabric as the dress. The modesty panel is simply a rectangle sewn down one side, you can just scootch if over and cover any gaposis when you are closing the garment. (Great for folks with regular size fluctations or for costumes that will be worn by more than one person, btw.)  I made the rectangle the same length as the part of the center front I wanted to cover, folded it in half, sewed three sides, turned it right side out and quickly hand sewed it to one side. Voila!

A couple of frogs were falling apart so I replaced those too.

So here it is, the only photo of me at Dickens this year! Looking a bit squinty as usual. I'm really, really good at squinting in photos. :)

After all of that rush sewing with the belt, it turns out I was able to squeeze into the dress with an extra tug on the corset strings (ahem) so the wacky belt camoflauge wasn't necessary, yay! But the modesty panel and the new frogs definitely made the dress look better and made it wearable since there was No Way I was going to be able to make a new dress this year. Next year I hope to make a new one--it should be part of the 2011 challenge, right?