Wedding Guest Dress

I knew my friend's wedding was happening in June for over a year, and I had decided in February that I wanted to make a dress for it. But there's nothing like an impending deadline to motivate me to get my projects done; hence, I did not actually start working on it until May.

At the very least, I had picked out which pattern – the Senna dress by Schultz Apparel – and fabric I planned to use before May came around.

Also I got a new printer.

I was low-key waiting to get a new printer to print out the pattern. There was no real barrier to me getting a new printer other than committing to a model and paying for it. I had a Canon Pixma TS9020 for nearly a decade, and I loved that printer because I got it for $55 and it had both a cassette tray (which was good for normal prints) and rear feed tray (which was good for art prints). However, in the past year, probably due to lack of usage, the blue ink stopped working consistently. (Did I need blue ink to print a sewing pattern? No.) I tried replacing the ink cartridge and cleaning the print head multiple times to no success. Maybe I needed to replace the print head, but the cost of that would be as much as I had paid for the printer. Which would be preposterous!

So after waffling back and forth about buying a new printer for like a year, I finally decided to get an Epson EcoTank ET-2988. I looked at it at Costco to make sure the size was acceptable, then I got it refurbished online because I like to reduce waste when I can. I had debated a higher model to get a cassette tray, but would have to give up the rear feed tray, and between the two, I would rather have the rear feed tray for art prints. I was also worried my cats would tear up paper left in the tray, and I was going to leave the tray empty unless I was actually printing something. As a test, I left scratch paper in the tray, and so far there have not been any casualties!

And extra yay because the printer cover I made still fits! (I actually flipped the cover around some time after taking this picture so there's room to put paper in the rear feed tray.)

I also set a house task for every two weeks and set up a button on my Home Assistant dashboard to print a test page, so hopefully I won't have any print head issues from neglect this time.

Back to the dress.

This is the summary of my process, which was spread across two weeks.

1. Print and assemble the pattern.
2. Make adjustments to the pattern. Alas, patterns are not designed for my below-average height, so I reduced the bodice by 1" and the skirt by 7".
3. Cut the main fabric. Also discovered that I accidentally threw some of the pattern pieces in the recycling so I had to dig those out lol...
4. Cut the lining fabric. This happened on a separate day than the main fabric because I was tired.
5. Assemble bodice. This took three days because I'm bad at reading instructions so I kept sewing parts together prematurely, missing the understitch steps, and being unable to understitch because I had sewn parts together prematurely. I had to rip all the seams that were not supposed to be there yet.
6. Assemble skirt with pockets, and attach bodice to skirt. I believe I did this all in one day (on Memorial Day, so it was like, all day). Attaching the bodice and skirt was fun because I discovered that the circumferences did not match, likely a result of having to re-sew parts on the bodice multiple times so the seam allowances became larger than intended. I probably didn't cut the fabric accurately either and did not check ahead of time if they lined up. It was mainly the skirt back that was about an inch wider, so I "fixed" it by adding an inverted pleat in the middle of the skirt back.

Dress looks very cute! Yay! I am so happy that it seems to fit so perfectly with just the basic adjustments I did. But how did it fare in real life, wearing it outside for multiple hours and moving around?

The post-wedding fit review.

While the fabric is heavier than I'd expected for a flowy summer dress, it did not feel restrictive. To be fair, I did not do a lot of moving. I did a lot of sitting. But it did not make my sitting uncomfortable.

The overall silhouette is pretty flattering on me as it does not accentuate my stomach and make me look I'm expecting (because I am most definitely not).

I made the mistake of washing it without putting it in a bag, so one of the corset ties tore in half and one of the corset loops got ripped out. But nothing I couldn't fix (and it's not too noticeable since the large flowers are very distracting). I will be more careful washing it next time.

The bride, busy with entertaining all of her wedding guests, did not get a chance to inspect my work the day of. So I wore it again for my birthday dinner. But besides that I don't know when I'll wear it again because I don't do many activities that require dressy attire, and it feels weird to wear it casually to work, but maybe I'll do it anyway. I can totally dress it down with a knit cardigan and flats.