The Everything Dress

Hello Readers. I hope you are well. My dress today is like an Everything Bagel. Do you have those where you live? It is a combination of all the yummy flavored things they can put in bagel. This dress has everything you could want in a dress. Pleats, ruffles, cinched waist, dropped waist, a string tie with beads, bright colors, unique pattern, puffed sleeves... You name it, it's here. All at once. It's a lot. Maybe too much?

I'm not sure if you can see the quality of the material and workmanship in these pictures. This is a well made dress. Check out these ruffles across the chest. These are some quality ruffles. These ruffles have been staring at me for over a year. I couldn't come up with any ideas to make this dress less dramatic, less busy and easier to wear. So it waited. And waited some more.

I finally decided I couldn't do much with the top and cut it off. Bye ruffles! I now had the skirt portion to play with. I cut off the strings at the neck. I had an idea to use them.

I took a little time to remove the scrap edge of the top from the skirt half. I just unpicked the stitches and took the two pieces apart. It is a nylon that will fray like crazy. luckily, the skirt edge is serged and if I don't mess with it it won't fray at all. This will make my job very easy.

I attached the strings at the front to help hold this dress up. The beads are cute in the back. I am not a huge fan of strapless dresses, gravity usually wins and the dress starts to slip. Then you have to pull it up all day. Annoying! But I was so happy I thought of what I could do with this dress, I just decided to do whatever came to mind. It is a loose sundress at this point. It's a little too loose. 

I like this new sundress a lot. Gathering the waist (with elastic) makes it more flattering in my opinion. I wore a little jacket with it to cover my shoulders. I think less is more with this pattern and all these details. That dropped waist made a nice bodice and the pleats make a great skirt.

Thanks so much for reading, now go make something fun for yourself.