Have a shotgun wedding to attend and no dress? Whip this up!

Let me set the scene for you:

My cousin Erin, already a semi-spinster in her mid-twenties despite being a good-looking girl, seemed destined for a life of QVC sweatsuits and constantly hitting 'refresh' on her Match.com account to see if she finally got a hit from anyone but her mom who made up that fake account to try to give her hope. She went to school online and she worked in a lab dissecting things that have come out of people one way or another; not exactly a recipe for hot monkey sex, much less love. Or so we thought.

One day, Erin was struggling to get a particularly large object into the ass barrel (the barrel that contains things that have been removed from people's asses, like light bulbs or shake weights), when she heard the phrase that is a patented pantie remover for women with a pulse: "Why don't you let me do that for you?". If there are any men reading this post, this phrase will get you laid 9 times out of 10. It sure worked for Mike that day with Erin. I don't want to go into the sordid details, but let's just say a few items from the ass barrel got another go-around that afternoon. 

Months pass and the two of them keep at it. Erin's getting high-fived everywhere she goes because not only is Mike cute, but he's younger than her, making Erin our first official cougar of the family. Words cannot describe how proud we are of her. Then one night, after a long afternoon of reassembling a small intestine on a cork board, Mike asks Erin if she'll make him the happiest man in Pasco county -yes, we know how low that bar is set- and be his wife. And that brings us to the wedding. Too much back story? Too bad.

So okay, the wedding wasn't necessarily shotgun, but the making of this dress was. I decided the day before the wedding that I wanted a new dress and buying one was just too easy. And inexpensive. I wanted to spend more money on something I would have to spend hours making myself and end up with an inferior product. Mission accomplished!

I picked up this Vogue pattern:

And this fabric:

And made this kinda crappy dress:

Please keep in mind that the crappy part came from me, not the pattern. First let me point out a few features about the dress that I really liked.

The full circle skirt- makes it feel very girly. I tried to get Bobby to wear the dress and spin around while I took the pictures but he refused. I'd better dust off the Smothered with Love pillow.

Pockets! You don't find pockets on a dress often but I love that this dress had them. I apply chap-stick like a crack whore gives out hand jobs- liberally. So the pockets came in handy.

Here's a picture of me demonstrating the pockets, in case you've forgotten how they work.

The bodice is custom-made to your bra size with the side darts. Most darts are vertical, like you see in the first dress I made. These darts are almost horizontal and they really worked to tailor the top well.

Something else I had never seen before- you know, in my extensive experience of making tens of dresses- were these darts in the sleeves. I didn't understand the point at first, or maybe just didn't care, but I realized when I put it on that they made creases right at your elbow so that you can actually bend your arms without making the sleeves all wrinkly. I thought this was a pretty cool feature. 











Another feature of this dress that I liked but you can't tell from the pictures was that it's fully lined, arms and everything. That meant I only had to sew a hem on the bottom since I didn't feel like the skirt needed a lining since this fabric is so heavy. 

What's that? You want to see the pictures of Applesauce that I took while I was taking these pictures? Well okay. You don't have to get nasty about it, here they are.

 

So that was the good stuff about the dress. Here's what I didn't like.

This big old seam down the front. I don't know why I didn't realize this before I cut the pattern pieces so I could leave the front as one piece but I thought it was pretty stupid looking. I mean, it's right there in the picture on the cover so I have nobody to blame but my dumbass self for not realizing it sooner, but there you go. The thing that gets me is that there doesn't seem to be a point to it; there's no reason it couldn't have been one piece and seamless. Maybe women in the forties were digging this style. What losers.

The waistline. I have a long torso so the waistline on patterns tends to hit higher than my natural waistline, making it look like I'm trying to hide a front butt. But I guess what I didn't like was that I was too drunk or stoned to realize this and add an inch into the length before I finished sewing this puppy up. What, me, screw something up? I know. It's shocking.



The neckline. I know, you'd think I would know better and sew this part slowly or carefully or not while drinking like I said I usually do with curves in the prego dress post but apparently I didn't. So it was slightly off-center, which, in another genius-like move, I decided I could fix just by ironing it straight. Sometimes my own lack of common sense astounds even me.

So basically, any of the stuff that you'd see right off the bat, I messed up. But it didn't keep me from wearing it because by god, I spent the money and time making the damned thing and as special needs as it looked, I was gonna get some use out of it. Here I am with the beautiful blushing bride. Isn't she gorgeous? I know, we were all surprised she wore white too.