Calvin Klein and I

I had this intention of making a new dress for saturday, when I shall visit a gent's dinner (after dinner) to sip champagne in style.

The men (or should I say gents?) are to wear tuxedo's (as opposed to their "normal" attire, smokings), but I have decided to ignore the normal female tuxedo dress-code, long dress, and wear something less formal, but still very dressy. Partly because of a lack of suitable clothes (I do have a gorgeous, white silk ballgown from the 1940's that my grandmother gave to me, but I think it's way too formal).

I have once again been proved that I'm a hopeless time-optimist though, instead of a dress I've made the base for a dress-foundation.

Oh well. I'll have to wear something else tomorrow and wear the dress some other time, you can never have to many just-in-case-party-dresses in your closet, can you?

At first I intended to drape myself a dress, I found this wonderful polyester (? I never thought I would call a polyester wonderful..!) satin (?) for almost nothing at Olssons Tyger & Stuvar (where you can buy remnants by weight, with a red warp and a black weft (or the other way around maybe...), but that project had to be abandoned since 1. my dressform is very slippery (no cover yet) and 2. the material is heavy, stretchy and very drapey =it slips right off the dress-form. Oh well again.

I might have hated it if I didn't like the way it looks so much... it's mysteriously black-reddish on the right side, and a rich, shiny red on the wrong (I don't want to line the skirt, it will be too pretty on the inside!).

Here's what it looked like when I wrapped myself in it. Would have loved to make something like that (maybe next time)! Oh, and I have to admit I am wearing a corset in the picture (I can actually make my waist almost as thin as famous Dita in it, but I had pulled it as little as I could in the picture. Still, it makes a difference! Not that you could tell I'm wearing it in the picture, I just look slim.... hehehe).








To move around the draping-problem and make something easier I dug out a "vintage" Calvin Klein pattern (1980's or 1990's?) that I got at E-bay, Vogue American Designer no 2050, from my sewing stash and was happy to discover that it comes with a dress foundation and inside belt, just what I want to learn how to use!

Searcing for the pattern online I stumbled upon this picture of an actress called  RoseByrne (never heard of her but she's really pretty in a really pretty dress) wearing a more recent Calvin Klein dress, and it does have a resemblance to "my dress"! Fun.

Although it's not a pricess-seam-dress like mine, there is something about the neckline....


Yesterday I got into it, made a usable toile for the foundation to test the fit, made corrections to it and transfered them to the pattern.

But, of course, if you're used to sewing with your own patterns, without seam allowances included, you mess it up if you forget that commercial patterns come with seam allowances inluded. I simply removed them from all pieces I made adjustments to, dope!

On my second day of sewing I'm about to make the back piece for the foundation. I'm lucky it's a pretty basic shift-dress!

And today, just to make it totally impossible to finish the dress in time, I went to a concert with a rather new artist that I've  liked a lot for a long time, Marina and The Diamonds. She just released her first album on february the 22nd, but she released a few songs that I all love about a year ago, so it was a very happy surprise to hear the first interesting ad ever at Spotify yesterdy, that she was playing in Stockholm tonight.
 
And for free!

So here's one happy girl who just saw one of her favourites live (though only four songs...). Listen at Myspace here, or Spotify here (you need an account for that one and it's not available worldwide... yet). If they had sold Cd's I would have bought one, but for some reason they didn't....

Oh, and I shot a video with my favourite baby-toy-Iphone. The sound isn't the best and I clumpsily missed the beginning and held the phone the wrong way (easier but still wrong), but here it is:



Funny thing, at the end she says "I'm going to eat some semla", that's the bun with cream and marsipan that I posted about before, I guess even if you like someone's music you don't necessarily share the same taste in food ;-)