My Starry Washi

Let's just get one thing out of the way: What the hell am I looking at? Modeling skills need some serious work, but I'm sewing more for myself lately so hopefully things will improve. At least I don't have my fingertips in my armpits.


Anyway, I made a Washi Dress! Back in February, for pete's sake. It was the first time I've made a real dress for myself and I love the way it turned out. In fact, you can probably tell I've worn it and washed it a whole lot. The fabric is Constellations in black by Lizzy House. (I bought it at Sewn way back then, not sure where/if you can still find it.) The black isn't actually as faded as it looks in these pictures. I originally made it to wear to my younger brother's rehearsal dinner at his weekend wedding in Vegas. It was really fun to make something custom for such an event, instead of shopping (blech.) It was definitely the right pattern to get my toes wet with garment sewing and make me warm up to the idea of doing it a lot more. It just feels good.  I wear this dress to work mostly, and get compliments on it all the time. Not sure if that would happen in a different work environment, but I'll take it!

I made an XL and it fits perfectly. It really helped to make a bodice muslin first to make sure of the fit, good advice from my buddies Kristin and Cherie. I think I read their Washi posts multiple times that week. The only tweak I made was to add one more line of shirring on the back, under the existing six lines. The middle seemed just slightly too big when I finished it, but that was the perfect fix. Forgot to have my husband get a picture of the back of the dress, but I do love the look of the shirring. It was a small struggle to figure out how to do that on my Brother (notorious for tricky shirring), but once I did it was a breeze. Rae, the pattern maker,  actually put up a very helpful shirring post recently. 

Sooooooo, wanna make one with me? I'm teaching a Washi class at Sewn Studio starting next Wednesday and there are one or two spots left. I've already taught the class a couple of times and it's tons of fun. If you are in the Cincinnati area, go here for more info!

Next week I'll try and get pictures of the tunic version I made this summer. I'll also try to work in some more Ron Burgundy.