Don't Know if I'd Wear It

I feel like the start of blogging for this year has not really gone to plan. Here we are in March and so far, only five posts for the year. Not that numbers matter, but it's a far cry from how things started off last year. Different priorities I guess, and actually, completely different life right now. 

Anyway, I feel like this dress is as good a place as any to start trying (probably in vain) to rectify things. I really don't know if I'll wear it. Let me explain. 

I made this dress in 2019, with some fabric that mum gifted me from one of their traveling adventures. I think it is Japanese. I really liked it, but I wanted to make a dress that was different to some of my previous dresses. So I cut up bed sheets and made a draft dress, adjusted it, tried it again and then cut into the real dress fabric. 

The finished product wasn't terrible. I liked it, but it also wasn't 100% fantastic. I'd successfully sewn in a dress zip, which made me super glad, but the bodice came up too high, especially under the arms. I wore it at Christmas (pictured above, with the Aprons that I'd made around the same time with much greater success than the dress), and then maybe one other time. After that, it languished in my cupboard. 

To fix it, I would have to take apart the entire bodice, which is always no easy feat, and then, as I had no spare fabric left (used every scrap of it in the dress), I would need to find matching fabric or adjust the dress somehow to get more fabric so I could lengthen the straps. Even the mention of unpicking an entire bodice alone is enough to put me off, but having to solve the problem of more fabric for the straps seemed to just put it over the edge. 

As I finished work for 2020, and did some tidying up around the house, this dress was one that I decided I'd may as well try to fix, rather than let it sit unworn in the cupboard for another 12 months. Of course, I took it out of the cupboard and it sat on the sewing machine shelf for at least six weeks first. Then I unpicked it (which, of course didn't take anywhere near as long as I'd feared), and it at around unpicked for another four weeks before I bothered to look at it again. What can I say? Fixing things requires procrastination. 

At last, I chopped off the excess at the top of the bodice and took it in where it needed it. I then proceeded to chop the entire hem off, rehemmed the dress and used the excess fabric to make new straps. Probably only took two hours, including re-sewing in the zip. 

But alas, I have no dress form, and had to have the girls try to pin the straps for me into place. So when I finally got the finished dress on, those very straps slipped right off my shoulders. I did unpick and make them tighter in the hopes that it would be enough, but it hasn't seemed to help. Maybe they needed to be placed differently? More in at the back perhaps? 

At this point though, I'm thinking this dress isn't worth too much more of my time. I have given it a good go, but I don't know if I can really fix it. Seems a shame to waste a perfectly good dress, and all that lovely fabric, but what can I do? I guess what I'll probably do is let it sit in my cupboard for another twelve months and decide then.