my right side of mind: last-traces-of-summer dress~

What to do if you really need to do laundry and have no clothes left?

a) dig some semi-clean clothes out of the pile and wear them anyways--no one will know
b) wear your professional work clothes to class (hey, it's all you have left, and at least you'll look good. everyone you see just might ask why you are dressed up)
c) do laundry
d) sew new clothes

Ever since moving to our new place, I've tried to put off doing laundry for as long as possible because it isn't the most convenient. Not only do the machines ONLY accept quarters, they are more expensive than the previous machines I've used >__< Unfortunately, I realized late last night that I only have professional clothes left. I didn't feel like venturing outside to the machines (or getting quarters), so I decided to play with some fabric.

Remember that awesome free-fixed pattern site I posted last time? Before I started working on the fabric for the dress for D and J's wedding, I wanted to see how well (or not well) the actual pattern fit and what alterations were necessary. I used an easier pattern from the same site and used bedsheet fabric as practice (it was still fabric! and it free! so no loss if I messed up :P). Unfortunately, this was like 3 days before the wedding, and after cutting out the traced practice pattern and rough guess-timations, I realized I needed to just start working on the actual fabric or else I wouldn't finish in time. So those cut pieces have been laying around in my room for a while...

...Until yesterday!

Yes, the 'fabric' used to be a bedsheet, but it was actually a nice summery-yellow color. I figured this could actually turn into a pretty cute dress. The pattern I traced for this resembled another dress I have (3rd from left) --

@B&N's wedding this summer with some lovely girls :)

Since I had already cut the fabric, I figured making it into a dress shouldn't be too bad (read: take too much time), right? Basically, I needed to finish the edges, hem the bottom, and sew the two pieces together.

Originally, the dress had a collar that connected the two pieces at the top, but to save time I decided to loop the fabric at the top and bottom, take extra fabric cut from the sides of the dress (it ended up being way too wide) and string it through to tie the two together.

About 1.5hours later...

new dress!

I added a belt I had from a previous dress to give it some shape and pattern. Not going to lie--pretty happy with how this came out :) Originally the back was a bit boring: