Finished: Draped, wrap-style (T-shirt) wedding dress!

Making this dress was so much fun I kinda wish I could go back in time and sew my own wedding dress instead of worrying that I didn't have the right skills.

My T-shirt wedding dress costume was a big success--it fit the star of the little skit perfectly and garnered lots of compliments. (It's not quite as good a fit on me--the wearer was half a foot shorter than I am).

Inspiration: I won't get into all the insider details of the skit (which we put on at an informal afterparty for our general assembly). But the basic idea was that the people who are part of the international Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) movement care about MSF so much, we would actually marry it. It's not much of an exaggeration, either--we are a passionate, committed--you might say obsessive--bunch. So the skit had a wedding theme, and the character who wore the dress was the personification of MSF.

Sketch:

The pattern: I made this up as I went along, with pins and scissors and basting directly on the dress form, and then just sewing it together with no regard to finishing technique or sturdiness or whatnot--it only had to last for one night, after all. I originally intended to shir the bodice, but totally failed at it and switched to a wrap style with ties. Here's a detail shot revealing the total slapdashedness of it all:

Pattern Description: Two-piece wedding dress. Top has a draped/surplice wrap style with wide straps secured with a tie. Skirt has loose elastic waist and back bustle/flounce that secures with several messy ties. Cheap single-faced discount red ribbon, a mosquito-netting veil, surgical gloves and a stethoscope complete the medical humanitarian look.

Fabric: Dress made from old XL MSF T-shirts from the office storage closet. Veil made from a cheap non-chemically-treated white mosquito bed net (I just cut a few strips of the netting and sewed them to an old haircomb).

You can see that it's a bit baggy on me in the back, and I had trouble tying the sash myself for the photo shoot:

The intended effect was more this:

Successes:

• Back at the sewing machine.
• I love making costumes.
• Everyone loved it, especially the wearer.
• I actually sewed something for someone who wasn't my husband or daughter.
• "Draping" (or my sad attempt at such) is fun.

Room for improvement?:

• NONE. It got the job done.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? I won't sew it again, but I do recommend playing around with knit fabrics on your dress form if you have one, and just seeing what happens.

Wear to: A skit. Or maybe just around town to help spread the word about MSF. (I did actually try this on at my sewing club, though I didn't wear it home for fear it would fall apart on the way).

P.S. Z found the dress very inspiring (as you can see from the surgical glove she is wearing in the above photos), and grabbed one of the leftover T-shirts and a hat to make her own MSF look:

P.P.S. I would be remiss in not getting on my soapbox for a minute with a poster from the advocacy side of MSF about access to essential medicines for all. Look closely.

Accordingly, today's question doesn't relate to sewing: What issues are you most passionate about?

Finished: My No-Pattern Reversible Shirred Skirt!

After all my trials, tribulations (and eventual triumphs) with shirring, I actually finished this skirt three weeks ago--just in time to be too exhausted to photograph it or write about it. But I have been wearing it (mostly the purple print side) and it's just what I wanted--comfortable, stretchy, cute, versatile, and totally wearable post-pregnancy too! It's shown above with the polka dot top I also sewed for the mini-wardrobe contest deadline I failed to make.

Side note: is my 36-weeks-pregnant belly a big round basketball or what? I know it looks cute, but it sure feels like a big lead weight!

Pattern Review: "Self-drafted" reversible full skirt with elastic shirred yoke. (If you can really call playing with a bunch of rectangles "drafting"!) I originally planned to modify this purchased non-reversible Burda 7910 skirt pattern, but it turned out to be a circle skirt which just didn't work with my fabric.

Inspiration: I needed 4 pieces for the mini-wardrobe contest that could combine to create at least four outfits. I decided to do 1 top, 1 (reversible) skirt, 1 dress/jumper and 1 top/cardi/jacket.

The reversible skirt was inspired by a RTW Gap skirt my mother gave me ages ago. On the fit side, it fit me just fine before pregnancy, but continues to be comfy and wearable after 40 additional pounds of bust, belly and baby.

On the versatility side, I found it great for travel. Cartoonist Husband and I traveled around the Yucatan penninsula in Mexico by bus in 2007 and last year, and around London, Amsterdam and Southwest France and Paris via train, subway, bus, ferry and car. So we were all about packing light--just one carry-on sized bag each. Reversible shirred skirts are PERFECT for that, and they don't look so bad even when wrinkled.

Shirred skirts were also popular in the 1940s and 1950s for women's and girls "play" clothes--or so I gather from the Sears catalogs of the time.

Also, I needed an excuse to buy that fabulous Maggy Lawn cotton print from Emma One Sock before it sold out.

More photos:

Note: I know the hemline here looks like it's WAY below the knee, but it's actually just below--I think it's the angle of the camera on my tripod making my legs look short.

Another side view and a front view (since I don't usually pull up my tops to show the yoke!)

Back views: (Somehow the purple skirt seems to peek out from under the black skirt despite them being hemmed exactly the same, but I just don't care all that much)

Entire review--with some explanations and in-progress photos--after the jump. I had meant to do a proper tutorial with diagrams and all that, but that will have to wait.

Finished: My No-Pattern Rib-Yoked Dirndl Gingham Skirt!

More fun with wearable muslins! My frustrations with shirring and my sewing machine troubles drove me to experiment with a ribbed-waist full-skirt alternative. And surprisingly enough, it turned out pretty cute!

This thing is literally two rectangular tubes forced together--a 54" wide tube of cheapo $1.50/yard poly gingham for the full skirt and a 16" wide tube of black cotton lycra ribbing from Jo-Ann's for the yoke. I sewed the skirt rectangles together, gathered them at the top, serged them to the yoke, did a 6" blind hem on my conventional machine, and that was it!

What's that you say? "But Mikhaela, I thought your sewing machine was tragically broken and needed to go to the shop?"

Yeah, well, about that. I normally pride myself on careful troubleshooting. I will sit patiently rethreading and oiling and delinting my serger for hours until it behaves, for example. But sometimes I forget that computerized machines like my Platinum 730 can have normal physical problems, too--like built-up lint under the bobbin area. Lots of it.

Well, that's a long and expensive trip to the repair shop saved!

But back to the skirt. I'll post a step-by-step tutorial of how easy this thing is to "draft" and construct later, but for now, I'm trying to decide if I should go this ribbing route with my mini-wardrobe contest reversible skirt... or give shirring one more go! Which would be cuter?