Dress-Dreamin'

OOOOhhh, how I want to make a beautiful dress.  Here is my situation as a seamstress: I want to sew absolutely everything I wear, and never shop again.  BUT, I have not yet learned how to sew a darn thing meant for the human form.  How have I gotten to the age of almost-thirty without acquiring these skills?  I have no idea.  I was sewing clothing for my Barbie dolls when I was a kid; I remember sitting on a lounge chair on the back deck of a cottage in Maine and trying not to drop the pins between the floorboards onto the pine-needle carpet below.  I remember licking the end of the thread and twisting it to ease it through the eye of the needle.  I remember getting frustrated that I didn't understand exactly how all the parts of something should go together to make something flat into something 3-D.  And then I remember my Mom telling me that sewing is not something you should do when you're tired.  "Why?" I asked her, truly baffled.  Sewing looked so simple-- you sit there with a little thing in your hand, whip the thread through some loops, cinch it up--tada!  Clothing.  Birds and mice make ball-gowns practically by floating around the space of a dress form in Disney movies.  Why should sewing things, and especially small things, be difficult?  Or even take very long?  To this, my Mom answered simply that small things like Barbie clothes were, to the contrary, much harder than regular, people-sized things.  I remained mystified, but eventually ceded to her suggestion that sewing was not for when you are tired.

Since that day, I have been tired or something like it for about twenty years!  And in the meantime, I have settled for a lot of not-quite-what-I-really-meant off-the-rack clothes, and resorted to charmingly childish fixes for my tailoring needs.  Ten years ago, I found a fantastic vintage aqua blue Liz Claiborne dress for $3 at a Goodwill.  I cut the horrible shoulder pads out no problem, but then the sleeves ballooned in a bit of a funny way without the support, so I twisted them a bit, turned them under, and pinned them in place with safety pins.  They looked so cute and blousy!  I always meant to sew them properly, but was also a little afraid to make my alteration more permanent, lest I fumble it.  I still have that dress, but sadly know the fabric itself has suffered under my care.  Someday when I am not living in one polar extreme or other, I will unpack that dress from storage and make something new from what workable fabric remains.  Maybe I can make a blouse that fits properly.

On the other end of things, here is the situation in my closet: the current contents could fit into a backpack and come with me around the world.  Awesome!  Living like a snail: a former goal realized.  Sparse living has some real benefits, namely the simplicity of a limited wardrobe, and the satisfaction of using everything I have.  Also, polar latitudes generally maintain slim sartorial margins for the entire community, so there is little in the way of social pressure to stand out.  For exactly these reasons, however, I sometimes find I can get an enormous lift out of the simplest fashion-related frill.  I found a lavendar wool pencil skirt at the Bruktikken the other day which has been in high rotation lately.  It makes me feel like I am breaking some kind of rule, my knees braving the elements with only a thin layer of long underwear between them and the polar wind.  I enjoy these little rebellions of personality amidst my otherwise strictly functional wardrobe, but function always wins in the end.  On an especially blustery day, I will be wearing my snowsuit and my Ugly Duckling bright yellow wind layer, and that is that.  And these practical clothes take a beating with so much repeat wear.  When Tyler and I completed our twelve month stretch in Antarctica, literally every piece of my clothing had holes in it.  Do you believe I am still using the same distressed cardigan that saw me through that long year down south?  I am.  It still keeps me warm.  At least it's not in a landfill.

But someday, I will be back in a land of moderate climate and the variety that comes with it, and I am so looking forward to having more of the fun of clothing back in my life!  If possible, I would like to jump straight to the fun of wearing the things, and bypass the gruesome ordeal of shopping.  Thus, my plan is to use some of my quiet, arctic winter days to begin fussing with some fabric and patterns and see if I can learn some new skills.  In this spirit, I recently ordered some outrageously beautiful fabric:

 It's a Liberty cotton lawn, which is to say that it is sumptuously soft and richly colored.  I saw this fabric for the first time in a shop in Portland, OR about three years ago, at which point I really couldn't afford it.  And then, thanks to the internet, I found it again!  I have a very clear idea in my head of what it will be someday, but I have not yet found a pattern approximating that image.  Perhaps it will wait another three years until I have acquired some drafting skills and can design the dress of my dreams.  This is okay, as it might be about that long before I have a good occasion to wear the dress of my dreams.  In the meantime, I am downloading a different dress pattern, and using an old sheet from the Bruktikken to make my very first muslin for my very first dress, which will eventually be made out of some slightly less precious fabric.  I really hope this turns out to be a story of triumphs; but one cannot triumph if there is no struggle to overcome, so I also anticipate a steep learning curve at various points... wish me luck!