Rain day project

March was hugely overwhelming with activities.  I'm glad it's past and I can get some of this art in my head out into the real world.  There is something very satisfying about thinking about a project for so long and then having time to make it a reality.  Yesterday school was canceled because there was no power for the second day in a row (the first day we held class for the entire day without power, with all the doors open for a breeze, letting in the rain and wind - at least we had water!), so I spent some quality time with my sewing machine and playing with fabric dye.

I have a small collection of ankle length skirts that I want to turn into dresses.  One of them was a hugely ugly salmon color, a simply designed rayon thing with big pockets that I think my mom picked up at the goodwill or somewhere.  I don't have a picture of the original article because I only thought to share the project after I had finished, so I cheated and took photos of the scraps left over - gah, see how gross this color is?

Salmon looks great on me, but I really detest the color, and I couldn't just give it away - look at the detail on the skirt embroidery!  It had to become a casual house dress (i.e. something I would wear at home and to the beach, but probably not out to a restaurant), so I cut some arm holes down the sides, maintaining the elastic in the waistband to make the top stretchy just in case.

I cut out the pockets that were luckily made out of the same fabric, and cut them into strips to fake some bias tape to make the straps.

I pot-dyed it with brown and green, the combination of which has hidden most of the hideous salmon color, or at least muted it, which is fine. 

It was pretty easy to do this by trial and error copying another dress I have that fits about the same on the top (minus the elastic).  My one regret was to have used the white cotton thread.  It looked fine with the salmon color, but after dying it was pretty obvious how crooked my stitching is.  Also, the dress could be a little shorter, as the sack look only works so well with certain lengths, especially for short people like me.