IkeaBubbleDress

This dress started out as something of a challenge from a friend of mine. She handed me some old Ikea curtains from her stash and told me how she'd always wanted to make something out of them, but never quite figured out what.

I had just picked up a huge bag of old patterns at the local flea market, and had Big Skirts on the brain. With the retro, sci-fi pattern in my head, I knew what I had to make.

Someday I'll dig the pattern envelope back out and take a scan - the picture was actually quite sweet. When I started the pattern I realized that I had just enough fabric to make it, and perhaps a little besides, but that I needed something for contrast for the belt and collar and so on. I dug through my stash and found one of the weirder things I've ever bought: namely a big length of pewter colored polyester stretch satin. I can't honestly remember why I bought it, but the pewter color picked up one of the colors in the design quite nicely, so I used that.

That turned out to be a bit more painful than anticipated, mostly because trying to make structured, tailored pieces like a collar out of *stretch* satin is like piling one irritating thing on top of another. It still came out alright.

I wore it, mostly unfinished yet, to the GBACG's Stepford Wives Tea:

(We won't talk about my hair.)

And then I had a photo shoot to document it, with my lovely friends Laurie and Jeremy. All photos below this line are courtesy of and copyright by Jeremy Tavan.

Looking rather demure.

Bodice detail.

Because some people just don't believe me when I say this was made of Ikea curtains, I sewed the original care tag back in at the neckline. At the time of the shoot, it was only pinned in though. :)

And the glamour shot: "Take back your mink, take back your pearls..."