Little Red Dress

For my final project in my Pattern Development class, I had to make a Little Red Dress. We were given a bunch of guidelines for the project, because the top 5 dresses were going to be selected to enter a contest in Dallas in Spring 2012. So I chose a lightweight wool fabric, and built my design around a technique I saw in one of my professor's fabric manipulation books: lattice (or Canadian) smocking. Here's what I came up with:





I did a whole bunch of tedious techniques on this dress, and there was a ton of handstitching involved. The smocking alone took me a whopping seven hours. This was my first experience doing a hand-picked zipper--also time consuming. The nice thing about my kind of homework is that I can watch movies while doing it, which makes the time go by marginally faster.



Close-up of the smocking:



I did a princess seamed bodice, which miraculously fit my mannequin perfectly. This was a wonderful thing, because I didn't get to fit the dress until the day before it was due.



& finally, lace hem tape: my new favorite thing!



I was working on the dress & neatening up the final pattern pieces until 6AM the day it was due. It wasn't that I'd left everything to the last minute--the dress simply took me that long to complete! My roommate was able to finish hers by 3:30 AM. She, too, had chosen to do time-consuming detailing, so at least we were stuck in the same boat together! I think we were given 2 weeks to do this, from design to completion, which isn't very much time when you have four other classes and plenty of finals!

But, our hard work paid off. Out of 25 eligible dresses, mine was one of the ones chosen to enter the contest in Dallas! My roommate got chosen as well--we're super stoked to go there together! So, a successful first year? I think yes.

i'm always pretty happy when i'm just kickin' back with you

So, I’m finally done with my freshman year of college. It’s been the craziest, busiest time ever. But I had an amazing second semester and some experiences I wouldn’t trade for anything. Now I’m home… well, kind of. I’m doing something new this year: living in town, instead of 50 miles into the woods. I’ve been applying to jobs, and I had an interview at a restaurant today. I’ve never actually had a job interview before, oddly enough—all my prior jobs have been offered to me, or through people I knew really well, so no interview was needed. As my first interview, I think it went okay… I never really relaxed, but I didn’t have trouble with it. And I wasn’t too nervous. We’ll see how it goes… I really want this job!
Here’s what I wore:








A simple combination. It was kind of chilly/foggy, and I was biking around, so tights seemed like a good option.

Even though these are taken in the most boring location, I’m really looking forward to finding cool places to take outfit photos. I forgot my tripod, so I have to find things to balance my camera for a while. But, there are so many cool locations here! I can even take sidewalk shots if I want, haha!



Home sweet home. First on the priority list to bring? Sewing machine, ironing board. Haha.

I don’t have internet access right now from my place either, so I am making use of coffee shops and the library. It is despicable how bored I get at times without the option of checking my email!

I hope to update much, much more often now that I’m out of school. I have some exciting news, too, that I’ll post about in the next couple of days!

P.S. I wrote this a couple days ago in my internetless house, and now that I can post it… I got the job! :D So excited!