Tried and True Review: The Comic Book Dress

A Tried & True Review, where I look back at old project and discuss how it's held up since I made it, both successes and closet rejects, in an attempt to show how my projects have stood the test of time and/or to learn from the mistakes of my yesterdays.

The Original:  POW! The Comic Book Dress

Made: May 2012, 3 years old

Update: This dress is still unreasonably awesome, with a new and improved fit!

Fit: When I originally made the dress, I think it fit fairly well, but since I originally made the dress there's been a pregnancy and breast feeding and stopping nursing and life, and it ended up just too big in the bust and waist to really be wearable. But my love for this garment knows no bounds, and too big is always easier to fix than too small. Enter... shirring!  A quick review of this tutorial and I made my first attempt at shirring. One spool of elastic thread later, I had a new and improved dress, just in time to wear it to the annual Maine Comic Arts Festival to match LMC's "H is for Hero" Wonder Woman tee. 

Style/Materials: A mash-up of Colette Pattern's Parfait and a full gathered skirt (with pockets!), this is the perfect sundress for me.  As for the fabric, I only wish I had bought more of it  (though if you search "Camelot Cottons Girl Power" you can still find a second design printing of similar prints). It's quilting cotton, and its undeniably girly with the pink and the female superheros and it just makes me happy.  

Construction: In 2014, I replaced the original buttons with some fabric covered ones and made the buttonholes functional for nursing purposes. The inside is well finished, with a bias bound waist stay and facings in the bodice. It's held up perfectly well. The shirring makes it even more comfortable and wearable.

Lesson(s) Learned: Shirring is super easy and too big is often easy, and worthwhile to fix!

Final Verdict: This dress is the best. 

The 4th in Four

I finished up so many projects in the past week, but haven't had the time to really photograph them. It's been a full week: Monday was Steinbeck's "Gotcha Day" - one year since we first brought him home, Tuesday was Mr. Cleaver's birthday and we enjoyed stuffed deep dish pizza straight from Giordano's in Chicago. On the fourth, Mother Nature outdid any fireworks with an intense thunderstorm, so we stayed inside and watched the last three episodes of Freaks and Geeks instead.

Yesterday, we took the day off and ran errands, bought a Johnny Cash CD, and checked out a bunch of comic books (the Runaways, where have you been all my life?) and the first season of Arrested Development from the library. In the interim, I've been chugging away at my tour de fleece spinning including the yellow lace-weight, which Mr. Cleaver termed "a lot of yarn." I finished my cookie-monster cardigan and I've been swatching like crazy for new projects. I even managed to sew on the bias binding on my second sorbetto.

I'm back to work today, but it's been a fun few days off. Even better, I'm just hours away from the weekend!

POW! The Comic Book Dress

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this here before, but I'm a bit of a comic book geek. My comic love was rooted in the90's X-Men cartoon, but really got it's start in college, when I would drive my friend James to new comic book day every week. In return for transport, I could read all the comics he brought back, and from then on I was hooked.

So when I saw this LaFrock dress on Pinterest, I quickly decided that I MUST make one of my own. As in I found appropriate fabric and ordered it the next day.

I actually found the fabric used in the dress above (Alexander Henry's "Sewing is Easy Print"), but I wanted to kick up the nerdiness a notch and picked this "Girl Power" print from Camelot Cottons, which features Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and my personal favorite, Batgirl.

The dress is cobbled together from two patterns, the waistband and bodice are from Colette Patterns Parfait, and the skirt and pockets from McCalls 4826. Despite some issues with the front bodice facing, I really liked the way the bodice came together and I have some lengths of linen I'm eyeballing to become a straight up Parfait this summer.

The dress is super comfy and is maybe one of my favorite things ever.

I spent a solid day putting the whole dress together, because I had a deadline to meet...

Free Comic Book Day!

A lovely event that happened this past Saturday (and the first Saturday in March every year, in case your planning your 2013 calendar). And where else to wear your comic book dress than to hang out with cosplayers and get a dozen free comic books??

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some reading to do.

Roadtrip: Crescent Beach

Yesterday Mr. Cleaver & I fufilled my yearning for homefries at the Miss Portland Diner, spent the afternoon at Crescent Beach State Park, and went to a friends for a barbecue for dinner (where the barbecue caught on fire, so we ended up broiling some steaks inside instead). All in all a perfect summer day.