Cherry in the air

I felt a lightness in my heart as I laid out today's outfit, and I let it guide me as I picked out a fun, flouncy, and short-sleeved dress. I wore a pair of pastel pink heels with grey lace on the toes; they are one of the four pairs I splurged on all the way back in November right before I broke my toe, and it took me a while before I had a chance to wear them.

Though I'm loath to wear long sleeves when it's warm out, the mornings (and our office) are still chilly, so the blazer was a pretty good compromise. My photographer commented that he liked the neutral tones paired with the more colorful shades in my dress and accessories, and I have to agree.

The necklace was actually an afterthought; originally I was going to go with a far less flashy one (last seen being worn as a headband), but I was excited about the weather (it's the first day to rise above 70 all year—not counting a couple of badly timed days that coincided with my crippling case of the flu), and I decided to celebrate with jewel-bedecked florals! Bring on the spring bling! It's cherry blossom season after all!

 

Tunic Fix 2

This dress is one of the 5 tunics I got on eBay a few months ago. It is the only one that actually qualifies as a dress—since it lacks side slits, I don't have to wear it with pants underneath.

The fit was kind of baggy around the waist, so I tightened that up with an elastic strip sewn to the inside of the back. 

[Outside view]

 

This tailors the waist a bit, while still enabling me to pull the dress on over my shoulders.

I really loved the embroidered detail up the front, but I felt that the lace panels all over the yoke and sleeves were just too much. I removed all the lace (which required me to open up a number of seams and re-sew them), and then washed the dress to get rid of the residual thread holes.

 

I think my alterations helped turn this dress from "80's lady" to "Medieval Maiden."

 

I did get a compliment on it from the bank teller the day I wore it, but sadly, even with the improvements that I made, I'm still not a big fan.

The purple has bled into the white trim, making it a mottled pink, and today I noticed a yellow stain on the embroidery. It's difficult to care for—I ironed it last week, and it got wrinkled again just hanging in my closet. Furthermore, the dress isn't a great fit. It was probably made in some Asian country for someone significantly smaller than I am, as the sleeves are a tad too short, and it tends to ride up on my big American butt. 

Now that it's gotten its requisite wear, I'll probably be donating this dress and moving onto bigger, better, and more flattering things.

Cowboys and Indonesians

My boyfriend bought me this traditional skirt and blouse while we were in Indonesia, to wear to Indonesian cultural events, to which we go on occasion with his family. It was over a year before I had a chance to wear it.

As soon as I put it on, the clasp on the waistband fell off, necessitating some last-minute repairs, and beads started tumbling off the blouse every time I turned around. In the car on the way to the meet-and-greet with the Indonesian president, Al confessed to me that the outfit was what you would call "Daywear—wear it for a day and throw it away."

He was very, very right. By the end of that afternoon, my butt was on full display, the zipper having completely detached itself, and one of the skirt's side seams, already gaping open because the stitches were coming out, got caught on something and ripped halfway across the skirt. I knew I was never going to wear that skirt again. 

But I just might be able to make it into a different skirt! There was not enough intact fabric left to keep it at its current length, so I decided I would shorten it into an A-line knee-length skirt.

I chopped off the bottom portion at a length that I thought would work, and then removed the panel with the rip. 

 

With the remains of the top half, I cut a few more panels (inserting one more gore that extended only halfway up) to round out the flared part and attached them to the new skirt. (This is of course an abridged account of the entire process, which involved much measuring and trying on in the mirror).

The addition of all the new panels added entirely too much circumference to the waist, so the next step was to add a bunch of darts to trim it down to size. 

 

I took an inch off each side seam, an inch off each seam in the front, and a little bit more off each of two seams in the back.

Now that the waist was actually waist-sized, I needed to open up one of the back seams so I could pull it on over my hips.

I admit I have always avoided sewing zippers, but there was no getting around it with this (completely stretch-free) project, so I finally faced my fears and popped in my zipper foot. I shunned the cheap zipper that had come with the skirt in favor of a much longer one salvaged from the recently remade lace overlay dress). I am glad to say that attaching the zipper wasn't nearly as bad as I had made it out to be. I left a long tail on it, because the skirt is a little hard to tug on over my aforementioned hips, and I might want to lengthen the zipper just a bit. 

Next, to finish the waistband! I am not ready for anything fancy in the waistband department, so I did this like any other double-folded hem, which enabled me to tuck the top ends of the zipper into the waistband. Somehow I miscalculated the lengths of the two sides of the zipper, forcing me to reshape part of the waistband so they ended at approximately the same point. Because of this, it may be a little lumpy and uneven, but I typically wear my skirts under my shirts, so most people won't be able to see this little bit of lazy stitchery.

The last problem to solve was what to do at the bottom. The original hem of the skirt had been adorned with silver sequins and looked lovely, but sadly, with the addition of all the new panels, I didn't have enough sequins to go around, and the newer panels were also an inch too short. So I cut the original hem clean off! Now the entire skirt is the same length.

Not wanting to lose any more length, however, I didn't hem the bottom. I just "finished" it with a kind of sloppy overlock. Someday, if I can find a long enough strip of something to trim it, I might do that. But until then, I'll consider it roughly done. I just have to hope no one takes too close a look at the hem.

I wore it with a white blouse and Western boots for what ended up being a very "Rhinestone cowboy" outfit.

 

Curls' Night Out

 

 

Every late winter for the past 3 years, I have enjoyed attending the Monte Carlo Night gala put on by a friend's business school. It is probably the most formal event I ever get invited to, so I gleefully look forward to the opportunity to get dressed to the nines each year (Here's what I wore last year, and here's the year before).

The event was especially momentous this year, since it is the first Monte Carlo night I've attended in a full-length dress, and the first I've attended with short hair, and  it might also be the first time I've managed to get all of my hair to curl successfully!

Sure, you've seen spiral tendrils here and there (trotted out mostly for Halloween), but to get a full head of well formed curls has been out of the question for pretty much my whole life. I gave up on my Magic Leverag spiral curlers when my hair got too long for them and donated them before I moved to the apartment, and my hot rollers met the same fate a month or so ago, but giving up completely is just not in my nature.

Remembering the pretty nice set of ringlets I had achieved with Magic Leverag (I since concluded it must have really have been magic, because I never got the same results again), I bought another set by a different cheap-knockoff manufacturer and tried them out! Magically, again, they worked! It took me a few trials to figure out how to deal with the way they only spiral in one direction, which produces rather drastically different results on each side of my head, but eventually I found a technique that worked! Internal curlers, you are my new best friend!

 

Modeling my 'do before the...

...big to-do!

Tunic fix

 

 

Recently I bought a lot of 5 tunics on eBay for 10 dollars.

They were all in some state of disrepair, but only the blue one was so damaged that I didn't feel it was worth repairing.

The other four were subjected to varying amounts of tailoring, and I can now say I'm the proud owner of 4 beautiful 2.50$ tunics (one of them is long enough to be considered a dress)! While I've always enjoyed having a few extra-long shirts for wearing over leggings, I can now say that tunics are a staple in my wardrobe!

It's clear from the construction of these that they were probably cheaply produced, and somewhat the worse for wear (even after my repair job), but they are made of such luxury-looking materials and with such luxury-looking ornamentation, I rarely fail to get a compliment when wearing one. Today's tunic earned an "I love your dress...thing!" 

It was actually one of the simpler fixes on the list.

Some of the seams were frayed on the inside (probably should have been overlocked) and were coming open, so I had to fix those.

The fit wasn't that flattering, so I decided to take in the waist. Since the fabric is woven and not stretchy, I had to come up with a solution that would allow me to pull the already-small tunic over my head and then fix the waist to fit. I chose to do this with a simple ribbon tie.

Side-ties are a fixture in one-size-fits-all clothing, and seemed to be extremely popular a decade or two ago. Many of the fashion blogs I read deride these features as unflattering or simply outmoded, but I love them because they are easy to install and easy to adjust to fit you perfectly.

For this tunic, I kept things really simple by inserting a safety pin on the inside of the side seam so that only a 1/4-inch length of metal showed on the outside.

In the space between this metal strip and the fabric of the garment, I threaded a pink satin rope with beads on the ends. (I remember exactly where it came from—it was a decorative belt that came with a pair of shorts I bought sometime around my high school graduation!)

I then did the same to the other side, using the other end of the satin rope. 

Now I can pull the rope to adjust the waist and tie it to keep it in place!

Change of plans

 

I bought this dress at the thrift store in early fall. Not because I really liked it, but just because it was cheap and looked like it came straight out of the 90s, and the 90s are cool right now. I planned to wear it with combat boots and sheer tights, but the weather got away with me.

Since that time, though, I've acquired knee-high lace-up boots, which are like combat boots but better. I will save the full-on 90s grunge look for another day (when it's warm enough to show off the iconic trapeze neckline), and today take advantage of the perfect color coordination of my favorite pink striped sweater and the figure-flattering effect of a skinny belt around my waist.

What to wear for Valentine's Day

You're not really an Unfashionista if you don't dress up for the holidays—red and green for Christmas, pastels for Easter, orange and black for Halloween, and so on. For the past several years, my Valentine's Day outfits are the ones that stick out in my mind the most—thanks, no doubt, to my ever-rotating collection of pink clothing. Ready for a retrospective?

2012: I wore a chunky fuchsia sweater dress to work during the day, and traded it for a brighter pink tank dress for my dinner date with the BF.

2013: I can't remember why I was in such a bad mood when dressing myself that morning, but I chose to channel my inner Rizzo with a tough-girl outfit and pink cropped sweater. In the evening, I wore the same pink tank dress as the previous year to an anti-Valentine's Day singles party. Here's the dress, though not exactly how I wore it that day.

2014: Weather notwithstanding, my short-sleeved red dress carried me through work and even the drive through heavy snows to our cabin in the woods for a weekend ski trip. Fortunately we had a blazing fire to keep us warm once we arrived.

2015: Another Valentine's Day, another ski trip! Although I spent most of the day in a blue athletic top (trapped at the ski lodge for hours because of a snow storm—did I ever tell you that?), I changed for dinner into a pink sweater and jeans. I'd actually worn the sweater much more festively the previous week.

2016: Finally, after a needlessly sporty two-year hiatus, I actually had plans for Valentine's Day that would allow me to get dressed up! My boyfriend and I had reserved a table at a V-Day Sunday brunch. And, as I discovered 3 days before the event, I had nothing to wear!

By "nothing," I mean 20+ Valentine's colored articles ranging from dresses to accessories....but most of the key pieces are things I've worn so many times, I'd risk putting myself to sleep if I put them into my outfit! I actually spent two days straight (I exaggerate; I may have occasionally stopped to eat) trying to invent a great new V-Day outfit from these clothes.

In the end, I decided my pink pants were the newest and most exciting thing I could wear. I briefly considered pairing them with purple for a less overdone take on the holiday's traditional colors. But I ended up looking like I was wearing pajamas, so I scrapped that plan!

Finally, I decided on my black tank top with the magenta lacing and trim, and those newish pink shoes. As cute as that tank top is on its own, with temperatures in the low 20s, I didn't have high expectations for warmth, even inside a restaurant, so I grudgingly topped off the outfit with a black blazer.

 

Before the blazer

Fortuitously, a pair of earrings I had ordered online from China just arrived yesterday, and they happened to match the pinks in my clothing admirably! They also happened to be enormous! I had expected them to be around an inch in length, but they dangled to just about my shoulders in a show-stopping display of size! The colors of the outfit also happened to match my hair, which I had re-colored with the last dregs of my Punky Colour Pink Flamingo hair dye for the occasion.

 

 

Altogether, what with the pointy-toed stilettos, skinny pants, blazer, and monstrous earrings, I think I might have achieved an "80's Valentine" look. What do you think?