Greetings! I’m still up to my neck in home improvement (we have 2 more floors to do this weekend) but I figured I could take a little break and show you one of my favorite new makes. After much waffling and procrastinating, I finally decided to turn the 4 yards of jellyfish fabric (Sea Bloom in aquamarine from the Tula Pink “Zuma” collection for Free Spirit Fabrics) into a Lamour dress.
I decided to make this as my one-last-project-before-I-put-away-the-sewing-machine while we were packing, but of course it’s not like I was going to _wear_ a heavily architected summer dress covered in jellyfish on a road trip, so it got packed too. I finally got the chance to wear it a couple weekends ago when we went down to Newport Beach for the morning, and now I’m finally blogging about it!
I have all of my pattern waffling and some of the construction process saved in a highlight on my Instagram, if you want to see some of the dress guts, since I didn’t get any photos of that while I was at the beach! I was nervous about sewing something with so many bodice pieces, but it wasn’t too bad. I made a muslin first, as you always should, and was pleasantly surprised that it fit quite well out of the box. I think I could take out a little wedge of swayback adjustment on my next one, but I wanted instant gratification so I forged ahead.
Dresses like this are difficult for me because I am not particularly busty, and without a padded bra for the illusion I feel like I look very flat. I ended up actually going up a cup size from the size suggested by my measurements so there would be a little more room to stuff. I haven’t yet, but will probably eventually tack in some pads. I wore it to the beach with a pair of these bullet bra pads just tucked inside.
I was nervous about some of the unfamiliar construction details (okay, mostly boning) but that really wasn’t bad at all, and with the massive number of spiral steel bones in the bodice I’m not the slightest bit worried about it slipping down, even if I were to wear it strapless. It’s also nice because I can leave the halter strap tied loosely and not have pressure on the back of my neck.
Attaching (and then working around) the halter straps was probably the hardest part of the pattern, and in the end I wasn’t positive I’d done it properly — you can see there’s a weird fold or buckle at the bottom edge of the strap where it attaches to the bodice when I wear the straps crossed. I saw that others had some extra fit issues when wearing the straps in a normal halter, so I half wonder if I managed to do mine backwards.
And of course, one of the selling points of the Lamour dress is the multiple strap configurations, so I grabbed a photo of each option!
OUTFIT DETAILS
Hair flowers: Made by me
Jellyfish earrings: Erstwilder
Jellyfish Dress: Made by me, pattern is Charm Patterns Lamour Dress
Blue fleece bolero: Made by me, pattern is Simplicity 3773
Blue strappy sandals: Crocs (yeah, I know. They look good and they’re waterproof!)