The Sweetheart Dress

Oof, this took me forever to write.  I've been TA-ing a creative writing camp for high schoolers, and it's more exhausting than I expected.  I'm lucky to have such talented kids, though.  I'm learning a thing or two for sure.  In any case, here's that long-awaited Sweetheart Dress:

Dress:  A short-sleeved, full-skirted dress with a sweetheart neckline and a lapped back zip.  Did you notice how it has sleeves?  Yes!  For real!  They're darted, even, or sort of pleated (can't tell the different with sleeves), which I find much easier and more attractive than gathering the sleevecap.  It's my new favorite technique.




If you've been following the drafting process, you'll know that this dress was not easy.  I made a muslin out of the worst, sweatiest, hottest, most unpleasant synthetic bedsheet ever (no wonder somebody donated it to the Salvation Army), adjusted, re-adjusted, and finally--finally--wound up with this:

I'm especially proud of the sleeves:

and the neckline, of course:

And you can't tell when the zip is closed, but I did a bit of Macgyvering on the back zip closure.  I couldn't find a white, 22" metal zip, so I bought an 18", set it in four inches below the back neckline, and just tacked the top of the zip closure in place.  The dress goes on just fine over my head and I didn't have to wrangle with buttons (ugh) or hooks and eyes (double ugh).

Dear Partner made me do some crazy shit for this photo shoot:

and lest you forget The Apron, we got some pictures of it too:

Just for the curious:

Apron: very sloppily self-drafted, reversible, made of quilting cotton, incredibly useful reinforced pockets that have already proved their worth a dozen times over, skulls on one side and robots on the other, THE BEST APRON EVER.