Saved from the jaws of failure

 A couple of years ago, and you will have to forgive me because I can't exactly pinpoint when, I needed to make a dress for an event. As I type this I think it may have been for a wedding that took place a year or so before Covid.

I purchased a length of dark silver sequin on mesh fabric to make the dress. I no longer remember exactly what I paid for the fabric but it cost more than what I normally spend on fabric I had wanted the dress to have lots of movement so I cut the  dress out on the bias. Stupidly, I hadn't purchased quite enough fabric so the dress was a bit short for my taste and my less than wonderful legs.

I thought that if  I added a couple of inches of  this puckery silver fabric to the hem then  my too short of a dress problem would be solved.

The color of the puckered fabric looked terrible with the sequined fabric.

Laid flat the two fabrics actually don't look terrible together. Sewn together though the combination was awful

 I had created a disaster. My sewing friends would call this dress a UFO, an un-finished object. I tossed the dress that made me feel terrible about myself, my ability to match colors and my ability to make dresses into my mountain of fabric stash. When i thought about the dress I would feel terrible all over again.

Yesterday, the dress jumped into my hand as I was looking for something else.  I tried the dress on and it actually seemed closer to a wearable dress than it did to a disaster. I re sewed the shoulder seams. I unpicked the puckered silver hem extension.

Last week I made a neighbor a circular ruffle scarf out of a pair of pants that had belonged to her late mother. My neighbor's mother had tie dyed the pants. My neighbor had felt awful at the thought of tossing those pant or having them just given to charity. She had wanted SOMETHING to be made out of the pants. I made a cascading circular ruffle scarf. Forgive me, there are no photos of the completed scarf.

To make circular ruffles you cut a series of fabric donuts

and then cut from the outside of the circle to the inside. You then attach the cut ends together. Physics push the outer edges of the circle outward  creating a bouncy looking ruffle.

Making that scarf was easy.   It seemed like a good solution  for the hem of the dress. 

Here is the dress complete with the black circular ruffle at the hem. I completed the last fiddly bits of the dress between yesterday and today ( lining the dress, edging the armholes and cleaning up the errant threads).

The dress looks better with a belt.

I am writing about this dress mostly to give you courage when you are faced with something that seems like a disaster.  Coming back to what had seemed like nothing like a complete failure and a waste of beautiful fabric just needed a second look and a bit more work.

I may be wearing this dress yet to another wedding this winter.