My First Chantilly!

Okay, my newest dress is totally awesome!   So modest, right?  ;P    

"I am a girl who likes a challenge and I love excitement!" Is something some other girl might say.  I however, hate roller coasters favoring spinning rides that don't make me feel like I am plummeting to my death.  I  read the end of books before I am finished with them so that I can be sure that I will like where things are going before I commit.  Not a big adrenalin junkie over here.  I like to feel comfortable and safe.

So to the surprise of no one, I'm not too interested in challenging myself when it comes to sewing either.  I like to attempt projects that I can finish in a day and that I feel pretty confident are going to come out looking pretty close to how I see them in my head. I am not a perfectionist by any means, but I get easily frustrated if a sewing project gets too hard.  That is basically why I stoped sewing for so many years!  I couldn't stand to not be instantly awesome at it. 

However, I recognize that this dislike I have for pushing myself isn't my most endearing quality, nor does it promote personal growth which I do value quite highly.

SO- I drove on the freeway for the first time in years last week and lived (yay!) AND I decided to try my first intermediate sewing pattern.

It took more than a few days to get this puppy looking like more than scraps of fabric being sewn together randomly, but I am so proud of myself for sticking with it, even after I made some pretty hefty mistakes that seemed impossible to fix. 

Introducing my first Chantilly!  keep in mind, these are not Glamour Shots of me- no makeup and no shower for me yesterday (when I got my husband to take them), but I was too excited to wait to show this dress off!



"Hidden" side zipper.



Despite the fact that I made a ton of mistakes throughout the process, I think that it turned out great!  I won't go into all of the mistake I made because that would take too long, but every mistake became a challenge I put in front of myself and I concurred them all!  I had to be pretty creative a few times, but it taught me a lot about how to adjust without giving up.  Yay-growth! I am especially pleased with the fit of this dress, since that is one thing that can go horribly wrong in even a project that you have completed many times before. 

I used some old green fabric with tiny white flowers that I had saved from high school for the shell, and used some grey fabric with tiny white flowers that my friend Rachel Browne gave me from her stash last time I visited her.

The inside of the dress.

The dress is fully lined, has a side zipper, and one pocket (kind of messed up and made it too hard to put in the other).  I didn't have quite enough of the gray and white material to fully line it in grey, but I had just enough of the green and white to finish off the inside with that.  I used every scrap of both to make this dress. 

Since this dress is fully lined, I think that the next time I attempt it I am going to make it reversible.  Wouldn't that be cool?  The way the pattern is constructed, it is possible to make the inside of this dress as lovely as the outside.  I already can't wait to make it again, even though I am already a little bit grumpy about the amount of time it will take me.  What can I say?  Laziness runs deep!