The Unfashionista: Sewnday

These dark days just before the official beginning of winter always fill my heart with sadness...but they also inspire me to work extra-hard to cheer myself up...sometimes resulting in an exciting fashion challenge!

This time around, the challenge is thus: to come up with an outfit to represent each day of the week—like those days-of-the-week-themed socks / underwear you had as a kid (you did have some, right?) but with a literary twist. Since wearing clothes emblazoned with the days of the week wouldn't be much of a challenge (and would probably read a little juvenile, even for my taste), I'm taking a more subtle route and injecting my fashion challenge with some good old wordplay. Each day, I'll wear an outfit that represents the calendar day, but with the word altered just enough to make it fun!

So today, Sunday, becomes "Sewnday"—a day to wear something I've sewn!

That something is a tunic which has its own rather convoluted story to tell. It started out as a black dress which I got in one of my earliest Swap.com orders. When it arrived, I found that one of the sleeves was torn halfway around the wrist (you can even see it in the picture!), so they refunded me and let me keep the dress! I cut off both sleeves at the same length so they would match up, and it helped, but more was still needed.

The skirt had that goofy low-high shape I dislike so much, so I opted to cut the front in a reversed curve—to make it into a high-low shape where the center was the highest part. I made the mistake of not measuring first, and I ended up cutting it a little too short. I couldn't wear it with leggings as I'd planned. Some people are OK with putting their crotch on display, but I am not!

So next, I used a roll of black lace I had purchased specifically for cases like this to get the skirt to a decent length. Unfortunately, the cheap polyester lace was very stiff, so it looked silly, and clung to my leggings like glue, causing the skirt to bunch up with every step.

I removed the lace and let the skirt rest all summer, trying to think of alternative strategies for lengthening the skirt at the front.

Somewhere, possibly Refashion co-op, I had once seen a pretty neat trick wherein a square piece of fabric was inserted into a side seam to add some length, volume, and allover flowiness to a top.

I could do that with this tunic, adding a panel like that to the front to make it more modest and more flashy at the same time.

But what to use for the panel? I had a scarf I'd been trying to sell for a while on eBay with no success. It was a huge satiny square with a motif of pink and blue chains and Chanel logos and...leashes? I wasn't sure what straps and chains were supposed to be, only that I wasn't a huge fan (not a big lover of logomania, me). I have to assume the scarf was a knockoff, given its cheap polyester feel and failure to sell, but if it wasn't, I just sliced up a valuable brand-name item to make into a tacky dress! Call me a rebel.

I ripped out the side seams of the dress to one-half the width of the scarf. Then I pinned the whole scarf into the gap, just to check that I liked the look. It was a go!

From there, it was just a matter of cutting the scarf into quarters (gasp! The point of no return!) and sewing them into place on the dress (harder than it sounds, figuring out how to get the right sides all facing out!)

The next scary part was cutting up the center of the front to make the home for the final scarf panel. I measured it out to start at the same height as the other two side panels. Because the skirt was shorter in front, this meant that the front slit was shorter than the side ones...which meant the scarf piece didn't fit exactly as the others had.

I positioned it multiple times before I got the bottom edges to line up (I was using No-Sew glue to baste it in place, which was immensely helpful!)

The next part was cleanup. All of the panels had a tiny gap at the top point, which I had to sew shut. The front panel, because it was shorter, also had some excess scarf fabric hiding out at the top, which required sewing down so it didn't reverse itself and pooch out at the front. I also zigzag-stitched over the raw edges of the scarf panels to keep the very fragile fabric from fraying.

I wasn't really happy with the way the front panel lay – it tended to collapse to the inside of the dress – so I tacked it down a few inches from each side seam. It only took a few stitches, but it effectively held the scarf on the outside where it belonged.

I finished the dress yesterday afternoon—just in time for the planned first day of my newest fashion challenge!

Fortunately, my boyfriend and I actually had somewhere to go today (some Sundays, I don't even leave the house!), so my scarf dress got to see some action. Not much, because the restaurant we had lunch at was so cold, I kept my coat on the whole time. But enough.

And, just to make this blog post longer than it is already, I have to mention that the boots I wore with the dress are one of my favorite recent purchases! I almost didn't buy them (because they were grey, and I already had grey boots), but I'm so glad I did. They have low heels, so they are eminently practical to walk in, but they also have gems embedded in them!