All Buttoned Up

Wow, thank you all for your wonderful comments on my last post; I am truly overwhelmed! And welcome to all of my new followers; I usually do like to welcome people by name, but as the number of followers to my little blog has basically doubled in the last two weeks, I will just have to extend a heartfelt, "Welcome, all!"

And now, on to what I've been working on. Well, one of the things that I've been working on; I am one of those people who has a huge pile of garments in various stages of completion. It's terrible, I know, but I just can't seem to stop myself! I made this dress with some beautiful burgundy crepe (okay, crepe-like fabric; I have no idea what it is made out of...but it was $1.00 per yard!) accented with a satin floral.



I made it specifically to match these beautiful gloves, which I got from ebay. The burgundy trim around the top of one of the gloves was missing, and there were a few other issues with them; of course, even though I have no knowledge of knitting, crocheting, or tatting (I think the trim was tatted, but I'm not too familiar with it), I was SURE that I could fix them. Someday, this over-confidence in my crafting abilities will be my downfall, but I've been lucky so far! I basically just tied a series of tiny knots with embroidery thread, trying to make it look as similar as possible to the existing trim on the other glove.



I made the dress using this pattern, with a few alterations, of course!



I made it with detachable long sleeves, because anytime I have an opportunity to make something wearable year-round, I'm all over it! Since it has been 100+ degrees here lately, you'll just have to wait until it cools off a little bit to see the sleeves! I also wanted to incorporate the scarf into the dress a bit more. Since this is one of those dresses in which one side of buttons is simply sewn on (no buttonholes), I sewed the scarf under the buttons, draped it around the back, and brought it back through the dress, letting it hang at the side.



Here's the back. I let the scarf drape down and then tacked it in place on the shoulders.



I don't have a huge collection of vintage buttons, so the ones that I used on this dress were chosen solely for the fact that I had twelve of them. They started out a lovely shade of yellow-green, and I spray-painted them cream to match the scarf. Since they are metal, I hoped that it would work; I cleaned them, painted them, and sealed them. So far, so good...no chips!

These are the same shoes from my last post, but in brown; I love them so much that I am basically just alternating between the two pairs! And, of course, my new favorite hat.



I really like the way that it turned out, especially the way the scarf mimics a cap sleeve on one side. What do you think?

P.S. If you liked that altered sweater from my last post, you will love what is coming up next!!