My mad dash to a pop-up gala

For the second year in a row, I attended a pop-up gala that my town puts on every year, where everyone wears white, it's a secret location that you have to walk to while bringing your tables, chairs, real dishes and silverwear, dinner, drinks, flowers, candles, everything.  It's a complete knock-off of the Dinner En Blanc idea, if you're familiar with it, just less pretentious.  It sounds kind of silly and like a lot of work, but it is really fun.  Anyway, last year I thought about making a dress, but ended up going shopping a day or two before.  This year I was determined to either buy a dress or make a dress with plenty of time to spare, but like usual, I ended up waiting until the last minute.  I actually bought fabric a month in advance, but it sat there and stared at me for a month.  The week before, I spend an absurd amount of time looking at Pinterest trying to get inspired, but I just couldn't make up my mind!  I even tried to frame it as a Project Runway challenge in my brain to motivate myself.  Needless to say, I would be awful on that show because I don't work well under pressure.  A few potentials I came up with are below, and you can see the run the gamut.

   

     

     

Part of my struggle was the temperature.  Last year it was super hot (I think it was still like 95 degrees when we went home at 11 p.m.), but this year the high for the day was in the low 70s with the low in the 50s.  I didn't want to be too cold, and all the pictures of white dresses I was looking at were soooo summery, when I'm really feeling fall now.  I finally settled on doing a modified Marilyn Monroe dress like the first picture.  I started with the new Esteem dress pattern from Cali Faye, which funnily enough is based on the second to last dress above. 

I played around with the pattern pieces a bit to try to turn it from a princess seam bodice to a gathered v-neck, and in the process, realized I was basically designing the wedding dress that my mom rejected as being too casual and I ended up returning

 

At this point, I was starting to get nervous about time (I started sewing at 6 p.m. on Friday for an event at 7 p.m. on Saturday), so I scrapped using the Esteem pattern, because I was worried about fitting the bodice properly with the crossing pieces in the back.  Instead, I just made it a halter.  Tying things up in a bow is a great way to get everything tight enough!

At that point, I just started playing around with pieces on my dress form and making it work!  The fabric I bought at JoAnn Fabrics, and it was a very lightweight poly satin something or other.  Since I was definitely not going to get away with a bra, I wanted to make sure the top was supportive enough, so I used a heavier weight cotton to line both the cups and the waist band.  I did not do any ruching with the lining, but unfortunately you can see my darts through the top layer a bit on the cups, and the waistband is a touch too big, so you can see some vertical folds.  Oops.  I also didn't have a white or near white invisible zipper, so I had to use a regular cream zipper.  Not my finest work, but hey, the dress closes and it's not terrible.  I am pretty proud of how nicely the insides turned out though - all seams are enclosed except for the skirt side seams, and I did a tight zigzag stitch on the seam allowance because the fabric frays like none other (not enough time to switch out the black thread on my serger!).  I also zig-zagged the tie edges and the hem, just for speediness.  

I finished it up with 4 hours to spare, just enough time to whip up some gelato!  Without further ado, here is the completed dress and a few fun photos of the evening. 

  

 

 

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