The black concert dress

So I went to Italy and came back. My shoes  weren't good enough for Freni. That was that, but I didn't have a decent concert dress and if you want to watch a frog in action, then it's nice to look presentable. True, he's not stuffy about clothes, being a hockey-frog, and apparently more comfortable in old sweaters and khakis than in undertaker's uniforms; but even so, it's nice to be presentable.

My neighbors are generous with their offcasts leaving executive desks, chairs, leather coats, expensive boots around outside each time the Foreign Police descend on the area for their raids of illicit trade. The area is more Russian than Czech and the mafia has a regular bus that ships illegal workers in and out about every three weeks. There are at least three safe houses along the same street. When the police cruise along, the watchman merely puts out the alert and a steady stream of bedraggled workers move from one building to the next. It's like that here.

However, such people do not leave sensible things  out for me by the containers such as concert dresses or warm legware which I need. So I have a steady stream of new offcast jackets, shirts, satin jamies and some other things which makes up the majority of my wardrobe as I cannot possibly afford new clothes.

Freni didn't like my shoes, but they were black and bought for three dollars or less at the local hypermarket, but unfortunately shoes don't cover the bulge on top. Frog was returning from Japan.

So I really wanted to wear something decent when I said  hello to him. As it happened, Frog came back. He had distemper and fortunately for him he didn't have to play the concert. But anyone who flies from Japan on one day after a monthlong tour and then plays a concert the same night is a bit crazy.

But that had  little or no impact on the dress because you cannot make a dress in one day. On the previous Saturday before I got a brilliant idea for a concert dress and went off to my fav place for textiles at Bila Labut near Florenc where I could by high glossy sateen cordorouy.

For  a  week, I single-mindedly set to work on the dress. A dress that I thought would be good enough to meet a grumpy, tired  Frog and definitely a class up from the shoes I had which are made-in-China rubber-soled net things that I wear the year round and put  thousands of kilometers on them.

Besides when someone plays so beautifully as the Frog, you want to be beautiful, too. Am a bit competitive that way.

This is what I made

I chose an old pattern that I had because  looking at dress patterns is both exhilierating and defeating. I hadn't the money to buy one and am good at recycling and recutting things to meet my own needs.  So I took the old McCalls 6688 pattern which, if I had a machine, might take  two hours to sew. Even by hand, I can guarantee a completed dress in two-three days depending on my eyesight and the amount of detail I put into it as well as the changes and alterations to the orignial pattern. In this case, the changes were not so radical, but major. I recut the neckline  to valentine which is better for my shoulders  and used mutton sleeves instead of straight.  Both shoulders wee broken in 2002, so things aren't quite the same anymore. One arm is about 4cm longer than the other and  one shoulder much shorter than the other.

My spine is a bit crooked and this always shows up if something is cut at the waist because one hip is slightly higher than the other.  Life is imperfect and really I am a very lucky woman to be able to walk.

Part of it is luck, but most of it is just plain determination and pain.

For these reasons, trying to buy or wear ready-made clothing is  usually very upsetting. By accident, I found a beautiful coat on an outdoor secondhand rack that suited me just perfectly and so I bought it as my only Christmas present. I had a coat but no dress.

The first step was layout and deciding  what changes to make. The neckline  front and back was  altered  first with newspaper while I decided what to do. Instead of buying meter textile, I bought the half-priced ends on the rack to save the  money. This also meant that I would have to  measure and cut  the long pieces  of the pattern to make a waistline in order to accomodate the  short pieces of textile I bought. The ideal place is  just under the breast to create a more flowing line that relieves my body of its natural chunkiness. I have nowhere near ideal proportions as discussed in "The Total Woman".  My small ankle is some 8inches and the larger ankle is 10 inches. The difference was a fracture that took more than a year to heal. When it gets to other parts it's equally disastrous, but then  not everyone  is thinly built like Paris Hilton; some are just Mack trucks.

I hate cutting. It's nerve-wracking. I can spend days laying fabric on the floor, examing and laying it out, only to walk way. I still have a dress from 1992 laid out, but not cut. It  creates intense anxiety for me as I sweat over the final decisions because there is no step that can be reversed once cut.

Then the actual sewing goes by in a flash, even by hand, from beginning to end. The clothes magically materialize before me. As I come closer to the completion, the more times I  test the fit and examine the work, trying to see whether I can ease it to a better fit.

The hemming gets done in an hour or two depending on how many meters there are, but time flies as I realize I am nearing the end. The utter last thing will be the pockets, which I might insert, but be so lazy not to finish as they re not visible. Don't laugh!  In this case, I  left them out for later insertion.

Totally different , the black dress was a realization of a dream. I wanted it to be  startling.

It required at lest 30 skeins of embroidery thread—all red—with the bodice and back all cut-out designed embroidery with  internal lining of red satin textured rayon to offset the  embroidery pattern. Modesty does have its  benefits at times. I lost count of the hours after seventy for embroidery.

1. Create the  embroidery pattern

I used  paper cut-outs. Manicure scissors are excellent tools for working with very small pieces of paper.  using the Cut fabric, I spent hours arranging  tiny pieces of paper on the  bodice and  back trying to find an attractive pattern.  BY using little  bits of paper, it is easy to discover  patterns that are pleasing and then enlarge or reduce the shapes  by just cutting new little pieces of paper. So eventually, there were hundreds of  various shped hearts in many different sizes and shapes that I put into  a plastic box with  many compartments. Larger pieces I put into envelopes.

2. Pinning
When I arriveed at the pattern I liked after  many, many hours  and  designs, I carefully pinned each little pieces of paper into place. Double pinning each so they would not slide. The average  piece was about the size of  my thumbnail.

the pinned back

3.  Outlining.

When the pinning was done, then the tedious work began of outlining each of those little pieces in white thread which I would pull later.  I've never figured out carbon paper and have no patience with the waxy stuff being all over the fabric, so this was a much better solution.

 the bodice in outline

the back in  outline

the sleeves outlined

4. Test.

And finally the  embroidery, using a simple stitch because heavily brocaded things have a tendiency to be rich in themselves. To be sure of what I was doing, but what i had already done before with  flannel for haats, I tested  a design on a scrap to find out whether the stitch would hold and  how it would fray if it were cut out.  I had remarkably good luck It was really an ideal fabric for the type of work I wanted to do.

5. Embroidering the pieces

The embroidery was done on the unfinished pieces and then finally the pieces sewn together for the dress—this meant  I would not be able to recut or refit the dress later. A risk, but one I had to accept.

the front

7. Cutting the Holes

When the designs on the individual pieces were made, then very meticulously I cut out the holes with the curved manicure scissors. This was tricky at best. In all, I only cut through two of all the little holes in the design and was able to easily repair the frayed embroidery thread and tuck in their ends.

sideview showing the cut and cut embroidery

backview--not quie as good as a traditional Salzburger Dirndl but close enough

8.  Finishing the embroidery.

And finally, I turned  the embroidery over to the backside and  carefully pulled out the white thread that had given me my pattern.

There was no need to give a full  red lining to the dress, so I only lined the bodice to display the cut-out work with the intent of returning at some point  in the future to make new  designs along the front  opening and hem.

Now the dress hangs in the closet forgotten. The concert never came. Life  continues. Frog was more than grumpy and the world exploded. Sometimes the best intents are blown away by exploding frogs.