TWIS: Shabbona, 2011

This is my youngest brother. He is getting married in this picture. I took it on Friday.

It was a great weekend — Friday held a short ceremony to make it legal and celebrate with some of the bride’s family that wouldn’t be able to attend on Saturday. Saturday held a bigger celebration with both families (and a ceremony performed in part by my own fantastic husband) at the state park where both my brother and I worked as teenagers, where many family gatherings have happened.

The day was perfect — the weather cooperated, no disruptions from other park visitors … even allergies declined to crash the party. Candy and cake and Jarritos — so nice.

I ended up with quite a few versions of this picture on my camera — the shots of my mom with my sister, sisters-in-law and me were snapped in between Mom’s shouts of “THESE ARE MY GIRLS!” … she had a lot of candy.

And Dad had apparently decided to wear his sassy pants when having his picture taken with Dan, my brothers & brother-in-law.

Dan was a model husband.

We had car trouble and ended up renting a car to get there. I returned the rental a few hours ago, and I returned to a clean home. So I started sewing again. As you know, I decided to sew a halter dress to appease my want for the Honolulu, 1955 dress from ModCloth.

We were on the water (the park has a sizable man-made lake), but not quite in Hawaii, and the print more subdued than the Honolulu dress. So I settled on calling this one Shabbona, 2011.

I combined the two views of the pattern — the halter tie of View A and the shorter skirt length of View B. The second bodice is still a teensy bit big, but so much better. You can see a little bit in this shot that the bodice has some extra room.

I never did get the correct length of boning, so the right side seam has boning in only half of it — I shortened the casing to keep the shorter length of boning positioned nearer the waist. I don’t feel like the dress suffered for that cheat.

The zipper was once again a fail. I mean, it’s in the dress and it works, and the combination of printed fabric, dark colors and full skirt hide the fact that it didn’t turn out well. I handstitched it into the skirt which worked nicely in the absence of an invisible zipper foot (another change I made — invisible zipper instead of regular centered one), but I once again ended up with rippling where zipper stitching & seam meet. I resewed 3 times and still couldn’t get rid of it.

But overall I’m happy with it and got some nice compliments to boot. I’d wear it again.

And I’d model it again: I’m a tiger!

Project: Shabbona, 2011

Time: Somewhere around 15 hours

Materials: Cotton fabric (Textile Discount Outlet, ~$12), invisible zipper (~$3), hook-and-eye, lining fabric (both from stash), boning (Vogue Fabrics, $0.89) … ~$16 total

Pattern: Simplicity “It’s Sew Easy!” 2884, view A top, view B bottom

(p.s. The bride & groom: handsome couple, no? I am incredibly jealous of my new sister-in-law’s wedding attire.)

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Tags: dress, halter, honolulu 1955, modcloth, sewing, twis, wedding