The Dress

Miss Nella is going to a dance.

This isn’t just any dance.  This is her first dance, and this is the Father Daughter Dance. Daddy will be her date.  Mum will be the photographer.  The Dress will be custom made to her specifications by – you guessed it – Auntie Lyz.

Years ago, my own dad took me to the same Father Daughter Dance.  As I got older I was never much of a dance person.  I can recall maybe two I attended in high school, and one in college.  But those Father Daughter Dances, before I got too old, were fantastic.  Dad and I would dress up, he’d buy me a flower, and we’d go and dance our hearts out.  I’d fling my arms and feet while Dad taught me how to Twist.  I don’t remember what I wore or what music was played, but 30 years later I can still remember Twisting with my dad.

For such a special occasion, Nella needs a dress.  She’s a little difficult to fit, being a variety of sizes.  Usually when I sew for her I follow a generic size guide and add sashes, so they can be cinched to her skinny Minnie waist.  I always make costumes a little large so that she can wear them over her clothes and continue wearing them for a good few years.  But such a special dress can’t look sloppy, can it?  So I had Christine measure her exactly and I cut and pasted the pattern, adding length in some places and pulling in side seams in others.  I’m pretty decent at following a specific pattern, but altering or creating patterns isn’t my biggest strength.  Luckily I’ve been doing this long enough that I can figure out how adjusting in one place will affect other elements of the design.  When I can’t work something out on my own, I call in the big guns and ask Mom.

A few weeks ago I asked Nella what color she wanted for her dress.  She’s such a little rainbow girl I really didn’t know what color she’d choose, but her answer was immediate and definite.  PINK.  In hindsight I probably should have guessed that.  She’d also mentioned to me last year, when I made her Glinda costume, that she really loved the double skirt thing.  Glinda had a satin base and a glittery overskirt and to her 5-year old heart that was a little bit of magic.

I managed to find a dusty rose taffeta at Joann’s for the base.  With a coupon the price was still a bit high, but acceptable.  I fell in love with a rose netting by the same designer and in the same color and I desperately wanted to use it as an overskirt, but at $30 a yard it would still have cost a fortune – even with a coupon.  Instead I went with a pale pink organza, embroidered with light pink flowers and covered in dark pink sequins.  I’m disappointed by the substitution but I suspect Nella will be happier with the choice I made.  My aesthetic runs in an understated vein; Nella’s runs pell-mell towards sparkles and shine.

The dress is fully lined so I chose a sturdy, good quality cotton for the lining.  I’ve found that good cotton is a solid anchor when I’m working with slippery or difficult materials.  Not having both my fabrics sliding all over the place while I’m trying to piece them together is a lesson I’ve learned the very hard way.  It’s a good thing I had such foresight; just cutting the fabric was an exercise in patience, and I already don’t have much to begin with.

I assumed – correctly – that the actual construction of the dress would be pretty simple.  I used McCall’s pattern M5795.  Nella had picked it out several years ago on a special trip with me to the fabric store.  I’d never had occasion to use it before, as it’s rather fancy, but a Father Daughter Dance qualifies as fancy.  McCall’s tends to be pretty easy to follow, as long as you have a basic understanding of sewing terms.  I used bodice C with skirt F.  The bodice was easy, a standard sleeveless bit.  I don’t really care for how McCall’s constructs their bodices.  They have you leave openings at the straps so you can turn the bodice right side out, and then slipstitch the straps together.  I find it’s far easier to stitch the neck and straps, pull the bodice right-side-out through the arms, and then open up the lining to stitch the side seams together.  It’s less slipstitching for me down the line, which is great because that is not my biggest skill.  I stitched each skirt at the seams, and hemmed them individually, then pinned them at the top and sewed them together with a 1/4″ seam.  Side note – most patterns will tell you to hem as the very last step, but if you don’t want to lose your mind you’ll hem them before attaching them to the bodice.

Everything pieced together smoothly, but then it came time to attach the bodice to the skirts.  What I hadn’t considered was that, including the lining, I was actually sewing three skirts to one very slippery bodice.  Enter madness.  Organza is pretty, and it’s shiny, but it’s also very stiff.  Sturdy cotton is very practical but it’s fairly thick.  Taffeta is just a pain in the ass.    Once I had a prepared bodice and a prepared skirt(s), I began the process of gathering the top of the skirt to create a nice twirly dress.  And I promptly walked away.

Gathering three thick skirts to be sewn to just a few inches of squirmy bodice was… complicated.  ‘Complicated’ is a generous word.  ‘Nightmare’ is probably more apt.  Gather, adjust, shift, sort, pin, adjust, gather, shift, adjust, unpin, shift, adjust, shift, adjust, re-pin, shift, adjust… Endless shifting.  Endless adjusting.  I took me hours to get this done.  It shouldn’t have.  I should’ve just powered through.  But the shifting!  The adjusting!  The bleeding from rogue pins!  The foul language!  I’d get a section sorted and walk away before I took scissors to the whole thing.

I got there in the end.  I took a day off from The Dress once the zipper was installed.  All that was left was the sash (confession: I hate sewing sashes, even though they’re easy) and the flower, but the thought of touching The Dress made me angry.  After 24 hours I picked it back up and did the finish work.  And I do believe it turned out beautifully.

As soon as I’d purchased the fabric I Skyped with Christine and Nella to show them.  The look on her face, the excitement… there aren’t any words.  I sent a swatch to Christine in the mail, to use when matching to shoes.  Nella promptly claimed it as her own and started using it as a blanket for her doll.  Her Mum won’t rest until she has the perfect pair of shoes, matched perfectly to the fabric.  Her Daddy already took the swatch to the florist to match to a corsage.  Mum and Dad and Auntie Lyz ain’t messing around, folks.  This is a Big. Deal.

The dress is in the mail now, winging its way across the country so it can hang in a special place until it’s time.  Auntie Lyz has done her part, and made a wish a reality.  Come this weekend, my girl will get all dressed up.  She’ll put on the dress and the shoes.  Mum will do her hair and maybe let her put on a little lip gloss.  Dad will put on a jacket and grumble about dancing.  Then he’ll see his little girl, wearing her dream, and he’ll realize how very, very cool she is, and how very little time he has before a date with dad stops being part of the dream.

Rock on, Miss Nella. Here’s hoping Daddy teaches you to Twist.