... party dress for a friend

 Remember that project I mentioned a while back? Finally finished! And it was a fun one. My good friend Hilary was throwing a surprise birthday party for her husband Tom and asked me to make a fun custom dress for the occasion. I rarely make clothes for anyone but myself, so it was a good challenge for me (not least because we live a hundred miles apart, so I couldn't fit her very often).

As inspiration, we used this Marc Jacobs dress Zoe Deschanel wears in the movie 500 Days of Summer:

picture from ASOS BLOGS 

Very cute, very expensive, very no-longer-available! But a good starting point. It took some searching to find navy eyelet fabric - I finally found some through an etsy seller based in Singapore. I was able to fit the dress to Hilary twice - once with a mock-up of the dress made of scrap fabric (which had an awesome 80's paint splatter print, incidentally) and once more with the actual dress before I put the zipper in. Behold, the result!

And the back, super cute:

I used Simplicity 2250 as the basis for the bodice, modifying the straps and the skirt based on Hilary's tastes. I also lined it completely, because of the eyelet fabric. 

Working it.

After a snowstorm the day before the party, I was worried that the dress wouldn't be seasonally appropriate. But Hil styled it with black tights and boots - which I totally wouldn't have thought of - and totally rocked it. She looked adorable, if I do say so myself!