Wear Your Heart On Your Sleeve

With Valentine's Day coming up in less than a month I thought I would do some pre-Valentine's wardrobe prep. Most of us girls look forward to this day with anticipation . This is one of those days that retailers take advantage of consumers selling the concept of love and romance. If I am like most girls, we look forward to dressing up and having a night on the town with our sweetie.

When I was in high school I was on an allowance that didn't always allow me extras for special occasions like Homecoming dances or white glove parties. I felt lucky I had learned how to sew at a very early age. I used my allowance to buy fabric and patterns to make the expensive fancy dresses for these special nights.

I made a few poor choices when combining pattern to fabric. I didn't always pay attention to the fabric recommendations on the label. I learned the hard way.

In the 70s and 80s Gunne Sax clothing was rather popular. 

1970's Original Gunne Sax Coton and Lace Dress

Typically, the Gunne Sax styled dresses were made of cottons and calicos and trimmed in thin satin ribbon and lace. The Gunne Sax pattern I chose was a very 80s styled dress, big billowy sleeves and all.

I picked out a pink taffeta fabric, similar to the fabrics of special occasion dresses I saw in the stores at the mall. I was very excited to embark on my sewing project.

The laying out of the pattern, cutting and preparing to sew was the easy part. Let me first say, that taking on a Gunne Sax dress is ambitious. The dress contains many pieces, many ruffles and many tiny buttons holes. Things were going pretty good at the start, but once I got to the bottom ruffle(which was approximately 2 yards all on its own) I began having difficulty. The taffeta fabric I thought would make me a Cinderella type gown was letting me down. The edges of the fabric began fraying and I had to double stitch seams, which were possibly going to open once I was wearing it. The double seams worked but they did not solve the overall problem. There was also a problem trying to create tiny little loops for buttons down the front of the bodice, ugh!

I spent hours and hours on the dress- perhaps a good week and half of hours at night (after all my homework was done of course) prior to the dance- I even remember doing last minute stitching on the dress just a few hours before wearing it.

Here is the end result and yours truly at 15

Valentine's Day Dance 1983

I strongly suggest to you my readers to match your project to the proper fabric- There is a reason for the suggested fabrics. As you see in the photo- the end result was lovely and I had a lovely evening with my date; but unfortunately it did not store well and fraying continued and eventually it was given away.

I learned a lot from this project and think it helped me become a better seamstress.