Love from the Underwoods

Or, experiments with online patterns.

As it turns out, sewing modern clothes can actually be pretty rewarding!

I was inspired by Netflix's masterful drama House of Cards (imagining a modern jacksonian political tv show while watching it;) more precisely, Claire Underwood's on point wardrobe:

So on point.

 And my take!

Just the facts:

Pattern: Burdastyle reverse pleated dress; I was drawn to it by the pleats that look like an en fourreau back.

Materials:  Strangely expensive? cotton pique, cotton thread and a miscellaneous zipper

Time:  About 5 hours (no, really, this was really quick!)

Opinion?:  Really great!  I'm going on a summer trip with a good friend of mine, so I wanted a cute but relatively modest summer dress.  A few considerations:  this dress is supposed to have sleeves, but me with my peasant laborer arms to not to well with standard sleeve sizes and I was too lazy to redraft the pattern; the side darts are really asymmetrical and need to be re-done at some point, and the whole thing needs a good ironing and de-linting.

Other than that, though, I feel pretty sassy and ready to take over Washington alongside my husband (played, obviously, by Kevin Spacey.)

 

It's only one layer, with pleats all around.  So basic, but so nice.  How I'm going to keep it white is beyond me.

 And then with a cute thrifted bolero to hide ungainly side darts:

I already stopped by my favorite fabric warehouse after a particularly grueling harp performance and picked up a dress length of wool blend that looks like it came out of Hannibal Lecter's closet for another rendition of this pattern (the new Hannibal, of course, not Silence of the Lambs Hannibal.  Ew.)

And because this is a historical sewing blog, here is a sneak peek of my finished dress (which will be photographed in earnest once my darling photographer comes home.  Hop on to my tumblr blog if you want to see more shots on my terrible mannequin.)

Until later!