I have a wedding to attend this week and of course I had to sew up an outfit for it! But guys, this sewing project was another… shall we say, adventure? First of all, I based my outfit on a pinterest pin. Sometimes there are pinterest wins, and sometimes there are pinterest… not wins… My first attempt at this outfit definitely ended more on the not win side of the equation!

I started with a plan to make a tulle skirt and a lace top to go with it. I made a practice skirt first, but didn’t include the tulle because I was using fabric I had on hand and I don’t keep tulle on hand. I figured I could get the fit right with the practice skirt, and that would be enough. I didn’t need the tulle. Or so I thought. I was wrong…. I should have practiced with tulle as part of the skirt!

As it turns out, tulle is awfully complicated to cut into a circle skirt, which is what I was trying to do. However the pattern I was using also had an option for a gathered skirt, so I was like “I bet that I can do a gathered skirt and it should generally be similar to the circle skirt. Also it would be much easier to make. Right?!”.

Wrong.

I made the gathered skirt with the tulle per pattern instructions, and it turned into a giant puff around my body that really emphasized my hips…  Really not the look that I was after…. but maybe paired with the shirt, it wouldn’t be that bad.

So on to making the shirt.

The shirt pattern I chose had a crop top option and since it matched the look I was going for, I went with it. As it turns out, crop top does not always translate the same between designers. I ended up either with a shirt that was too short, or a crop top that was too long. I’m not really sure which one to call it.

Can we just say eww, though? This whole outfit is basically a version of my pinspiration that was never meant to be seen by human eyes! At this point, I was kind of at a loss. I had no idea how to fix this frumpy mess of an outfit. So I turned to Instagram. HELP! I posted the outfit in my stories and asked for suggestions. I was so overwhelmed by the amount of amazing people who messaged me and wanted to help me fix this! Everyone was so kind and helpful.  I have some of the best people on there! Like for real! With all of the suggestions that I got, I decided to shorten the crop top, and try to get rid of some of the poof in my skirt. I measured my side waist length and used that measurement to shorten the top. Since it had a scalloped edge and I wasn’t hemming it, I didn’t have to calculate for hem allowance. That took care of the shirt. It made a world of difference just changing the length!

However, we still had the issue of the skirt. I played around with it for a long time. I tried ironing the crap out of it, I tried steaming it, I tried tacking it down. There seemed to be nothing that would kill the poof. Well it just really wasn’t working out for me, so I decided to count the tulle skirt as a loss, and go with my practice skirt that had no tulle. Oddly enough, my practice skirt turned out WAY better than my “actual” skirt. I may not have been able to salvage the tulle skirt like I wanted to, but I think the practice skirt with the alterations to the shirt, make a pretty decent special occasion outfit! Most of my instagram helpers approved of this version as well. If you were one of those Instagram helpers, thank you so much! I’m so grateful you follow my account and love hearing from you! You make a difference to me.

In the end it was a lot of extra effort, but it turns out with the help of brilliant instagram friends you can still come out with an outfit that looks pretty decent!

Thanks for being here, and thank you for reading!