As of last night I finished the swing dress I’d started a couple of years ago. I’d already cut out all the pieces, but things happened so it got stuffed in the closet along with two other batches of fabric I’d bought to make two other dresses in the same pattern.

Now I LOVE swing dresses. They look great on me, and I have three or so of them from Torrid, but when I found this awesome skulls and roses fabric I knew I wanted to make a swing dress out of it (and prove that the pattern would work on my body so that I could make more if I wanted to).

Anyhoo, I pulled out the pieces and the pattern on Saturday and started putting everything together. This is one of those patterns that gives you more than enough seam allowance so that you can baste the dress together and fit it to yourself before actually sewing everything. To my surprise the dress fit almost perfectly except around the waist, so I let that out a bit and tried it back on. Et voila, I had an awesome new dress that the Brit pronounced, “So you.” I think he was talking about the fabric, but whatever.

Yesterday was spent tearing the parts apart and sewing everything together for real this time, including the back zipper (which was surprisingly easy. Of course, having a zipper foot helps), finishing off with hemming the skirt. I tried it on again with the Brit’s help in doing up my zipper, and we danced for a moment in the craft room because this dress was made for dancing. I should have tried it on with the black net petticoat I have, but I can always do that later.

With the completion of Skulls and Roses, I am also done with every single project that I’d started before stuffing them in the closet (the three quilt tops need to be quilted but that will be done at my local quilt store), which I count as Milestone One. Everything I do from now on will need to be prepped first before I start work on it. And I do intend to turn the other two batches of fabric (one is black cotton with darker black swirls on it, and the other is complementary quilting fabric in blue and cream with pictures of flowers and handwriting on it—that one I may put a lace overlay on) into swing dresses as well, but that will probably happen sometime in late March/early April.

In writing news, the Brit came up with a really cool idea for an SF story that I’ve got percolating in the back of my mind to see if it’ll grow a plot. So I’ve got that going for me as well. Happy Monday!