Of Neon and Flamenco

Hello Co-Op!

I hope the folks here in the USA are having a great memorial day weekend. I've been glad for the opportunity to slow down and relax a little. And do some sewing of course!

Dress! Pros: My favorite color, neon green! And I love the ruffle at the bottom. Con: Strapless, and since it's one solid color that's highly unusual, I couldn't add straps without it having that "I literally just sewed some straps on this" look

I decided to add some fabric to the ruffle, thus giving me a place to coordinate some straps off of. Enter this shirt from high school, because at one point I thought wearing things 5x my size looked good (???)

I cut several bands of fabric from the shirt

Making sure to carefully match the pattern so it would look right

Pin and hem the new pieces to all look the same

Sew them together into one looonnngg ribbon

Pin this new ruffle to the old ruffle. Drag this project out to a week because you keep avoiding it because pinning is tedious.

Sew on ruffle. Look at the luck! I had JUST enough  thread on my bobbin to sew on the whole thing

I used the tiniest zig-zag my machine could muster. Yes I know the thread is teal. That toned in the best since I don't have neon thread :(

Ruffle complete! Very flamenco-y

That very bottom bit was another, separate, shorter ruffle from the main one. There was juuussstt enough fabric on that shirt to line the whole edge of the dress. Few!

NOW I can add straps! I decided to use the ones that were already part of the shirt

That white ribbing on the edges was way too much and too floppy, so I folded it in half and sewed it down

Finished result

Now for the inside out and pin on straps part

Back

Sew it all down and voila! 

Back. The straps aren't as lumpy as they look, I swear.

And there you have it! It needs to be worn with a strapless bra, but that's OK with me. It looks good and the pink helps to give it a little more interest.

On to the next project!

~Illy