80's Prom Dress that's "Truly Outragoues"

I don’t know if you’ve heard of “ProjectSewn” but it’s awesome.  It’s the women’s equivalent to Project Run & Play and run by the same lovely gals from Simple Simon.  I’ve been voting the past two seasons, but haven’t sewn along at all.  I really wanted to join in at some point, so why not now?  I missed the link up, but I can still sew along!  This week’s theme is “Leading Ladies” where we make ourselves something inspired by our favorite leading lady.  I have many favorites and most of them are named Jennifer  (Jennifer Lawrence, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Aniston) So I went with one of them.  Here’s my J. Anniston inspired look:

Crystal, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??!?  Here’s the dealeo.  I absolutely loved Rachel from Friends.  That’s really my only base of love for Jennifer Aniston since, lets face it, her movie career has been awful.  I’m a Friends FANATIC, though and Rachel was one of my 6 favorite characters.  Catch that?   I had to make an 80’s prom dress for the event at SNAP (‘HAD’ to...) and I drew my inspiration from those fabulous 80’s flashbacks of the crew.  I wanted to wear something that Rachel and Monica’s third wheel bad dancer friend would have worn and I think I accomplished that.

I purchased an authentic 80’s pattern-  Butterick 6444.  It didn’t go up to my size, but I made it work.  My friend helped me alter the pattern and then I made a muslin of the bodice.  I had to alter it BIG time (all by myself since my friend was like CRYSTAL you can do it!) and then made another muslin with those changes.  Then I made final changes and got to work cutting into my “pretty” fabric. It took a lot of practice to get the fit right, but I was super happy! It was the first time I had ever used boning and netting so it was an experiment, but a successful one, thank baby Jesus.

The skirt portion of this pattern was a MESS for my body type, so I went on a hunt for a better bottom half...of the pattern.  If I could just purchase different halves of bodies to change out, I might do that, though.  HAHA!  I ended up using the Skirt from the Rebecca by Sis Boom.  I added a self-drafted poofy peplum to hide the tum tum and YAY!  Perfect and exactly what I wanted.

So there you have it!  “My Rachel Green’s 2^nd best friend’s dress” in all of its bodacious glory!  I didn’t know what the themes for the season were going to be before this dress was made, but since I really did draw my inspiration from a leading lady, fate just did me a favor.  You should sew along too!  You need a new outfit anyway...seriously.

-Crystal-