Dress For The Occasion

I don’t know if you can call it a hobby when it only happens a couple of times a year, but nevertheless, making 'special occasion clothes' is how I create my happiness.

I learned to sew when I was just five years old. I’m not talking needle and thread. My mum had no patience for that. She taught me how to machine sew and skipped straight over the basics and put me on the over-locker. The first thing I ever made, all on my own, was a pillowcase. I submitted it to the local country show and I won first place in my division. I was hooked!

I studied textiles in high school and continued sewing in my spare time throughout my teen years. I learned the finer point of how to correctly install a zipper, sew on a button, dye fabric and so much more. Plus, I finally understood why you don’t use fabric scissors on anything but fabric. Which lead to a sincere apology to my mother for the scrapbooking episode, which she did not accept and I fully support her in that because I got glue on the blades and they never worked quite right again.

So there I was, with an arm-long list of sewing-related skills and nothing to do with them. As much as I loved designing and creating clothes and costumes, it wasn’t my fate in this world to make it my career. And with less and less spare time I found there was a layer of dust quickly forming on my sewing machine. And I missed it. For me, there is something special about seeing a piece of fabric and simply knowing what it was destined to become. Or when you find an old dress in a second-hand store, severely out of date and unwearable excepting maybe for a costume party, and turn it into something fun and modern.

And so I began a tradition, starting with my formal dresses in high school. At least once a year, I pick an event, any event, where something a little fancier or a little silly could be worn and make myself a one-of-a-kind dress or costume or something. Sometimes I make something from scratch, usually using old unwanted fabric scraps, and other times I upcycle items. And this is how I create my happiness.

Listening to music along with the gentle snip of the scissors and hum of the sewing machine, I remember my mum teaching me to sew. I remember my dad teaching me the importance of reduce reuse recycle. I remember every other time I’ve made myself a special one-of-a-kind item and the events I attended. I remember each of the special things that happened in each of my outfits. I feel the power of my own ability to create, I feel the depth of my skill and my knowledge, and I feel the thrill of making something completely original and entirely my own.

Now, I’m not going to take you through every single thing I’ve ever made, because there is a lot, and this story would end up way too long. So I’m just going to tell you a very little bit about some of my favorites. But I love them all for different reasons, sometimes it’s because of how awesome the final product was, sometimes it’s because of the event I attended. Sometimes it because of the frustration and swearing that occurred during the project and the fact that I didn’t give up. But regardless of the reason here are my ten favorite projects.

1. The Black Princess Dress:

I cannot apologize enough for the awkward dancing photos… it was my first slow dance with a boy that wasn’t my dad. Yes, I was already at university; I was a very late bloomer. I’d found this old dress in a second-hand store and it had those big poofy sleeves, you know the eighties ones. So I took them off, fixed the beading, and then cut out the back (because it was too tight) and used ribbon to hold it in place. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But hey, I will always remember feeling like a princess the first time I slow danced with a boy I liked, who called me pretty.

2. Ahoy, Maties!

What can I say; I was a huge Pirates of the Caribbean fan. This was originally made for a friend's eighteenth from which I returned with multiple pairs of handcuff I didn’t own attached to my wrists. But it also got a few nights out while I was at university. The headwrap was made from old pillowcase material my mum didn’t need, the vest was made from calico and colored with a permanent marker because it was a last-minute job and sometimes you just make do with what you have. While there isn’t a photo of it I can tell you there is a skull and crossbones appliquéd on the back, that I cut out of an old set of pajamas. And I will always remember how this costume made me feel sneaky and like I too was a scallywag… it also, unfortunately, gave me a fondness for rum.

3. Lace, rainbow, purple... I couldn't pick!

I spent way too long on this dress to not have a decent photo of it. I used a broken strapless bra to create the structured support in the top half and then attached a black lace layer, a rainbow velvet layer, a purple shine layer, and then five layers of tulle underneath. Why so many clashing fabrics you ask? Well, they were all the leftovers from other people’s projects. And I will always remember that someone else won best dressed that night because ‘she made her own dress’, apparently mine was so well made no one could tell, and I dined on that for a year.

4. Gothic Fun

Again, I feel like I need to apologize for these photos, they do get better… or at least less weird. This was made out of a plus-size black lace top that had a massive tear in it that couldn’t be repaired, so I sewed it into a mini lace dress, that I think I wore once before deciding it was too easy to accidentally show strangers where babies came from. But when it came time to do our little avant-garde performance of the work of Edgar Allan Poe it was perfect. It got the chance to not just be an outfit, but a costume! And I will always remember the rough glide of the lace on my skin as I overacted the hell out of The Tell-Tale Heart!

5. Curse this fabric... but damn I looked good!

This one is purple velvet and by far one of the hardest materials I ever worked with. I had fine purple hairs up my nose for weeks. And the ruching I did so it would be snug but not clinging… a nightmare! It had to be done by hand and just thinking about it, I can feel the phantom ache in my fingers and string burn on my skin. Weirdly the best photo I have of it is when I lent it to my friend a good five years after I originally made it. I would like to point out the slight improvement in my dancing skills, hence why I couldn’t exclude the blurry photo. To this day, if I put on this dress, I feel like a sexy ‘Bond Girl’, like I could make any man drool, even if that’s not strictly true.

6. Magenta by name, black and white by nature...

Okay, I could have bought my Rocky Horror Picture Show costume online… they are everywhere, but waste not, want not! The dress underneath I altered out of two old black men’s dress shirts and the apron was a mixture of old ribbon and an old silk curtain that had to be retired after it was ripped. I could never forget my first Rocky Horror Picture Show night and the joy of being surrounded by my fellow oddballs, singing and dancing in an old theatre, or the fact that I dressed my sister, who had never seen the movie as Janice, oh it was hilarious.

7. Country ball... sounds dirty!

It may look like I’m wearing some sort of crinoline, but that’s just my much-improved sewing skills and a lot of tulle. I made this dress for the local Country Show Ball, and oh my did I have fun. I’d picked up the tulle second-hand and immediately knew it had to be a giant tutu-style dress, nothing else would do. Learning how to attach it to the top so that it stayed stiff and fluffy was quite the case of trial and error but I do think I nailed it in the end. And I will always remember having one too many glasses of wine and giving up propriety for a solo twirl on the dance floor. I can’t have embarrassed anyone too much because a year later I was asked to help promote the event… so it got another day out at the local farmer's markets while everyone else was in jeans and a t-shirt.

8. Teddy Bear Life!

Okay, this one isn’t a dress, but it is awesome. In honor of my tenth year at a particular camping festival, my mum and I got together and made a matching overall onesie and teddy bear jumper. Why? Because it’s freezing that time of year and in my design, you don’t have to get naked to pee, which is the real crime of onesies! I will always remember how long it took to get those ears just right and running around for five days being called ‘Red’ and coming home smelling so bad I literally wasn’t allowed in the house.

9. Never a bridesmaid, never a bride!

Did you know a bachelorette requires swag? Neither did I, until I was a bridesmaid. But I also happened to know the bride was a big fan of my projects, so what did I do? I made us all matching eye masks from ripped sheets, hand-painting the art on them, ditto her sash, and our matching t-shirts, 'Bride To Be', 'Drunk In Love' and I was 'Just Drunk'. And since we’re a bunch of badass women I got us all matching black jackets and used an iron-on transfer to put decals on the back so we looked like a girl gang. I gave us all our ‘Street Names’ and ‘tagline’s which arched around a very sexy merman I had drawn and colored differently for each of us. For instance, I was ‘Deelicious’ and I put ‘the laughter in manslaughter'. It probably would have been easier to order a bunch of stuff online but my way showed a lot more love. And that’s what I’ll always remember, how much time and love I put into those creations.

10. The snowflake dress...

Don’t tell the others but this is my all-time favorite. What do you do when your grandma is throwing out her old lace curtains? Turn them into a dress, obviously! Do you have a pattern? No! Is the fabric easy to work with? Definitely not! Was it worth it? Hell yes. I spent hours cutting around the lace pattern in the fabric so that the hem, the neckline, and the sleeves have no seems. I’ve worn it too many times to remember only one thing, although wearing it to work for Halloween was a highlight, particularly since I caught the bus to work, so I was dressed like that amongst the morning commuters. But every time I’ve worn this dress at some point someone tells me they like it and I proudly declare that I made it and then I say ‘watch this', and spin in a circle so it flies out around me and I look like a spinning snowflake.

So maybe this isn’t a hobby in the traditional sense, I don’t do it all the time after all, but when I do, it brings me so much happiness. I wish I had more time for sewing but at least having the goal of one event a year makes keeping up with one of my favorite past times achievable. And I will be the first to admit; I am not the best at it. My seams are messy, and it usually takes me a couple of attempts to make sure the zipper doesn’t gape, but that doesn’t matter. Keeping up with my sewing reminds me that you don’t have to be the best at something to do it, some things you’re meant to do for the love of it. And doing something just because you love it, is an easy way to create your own happiness!