Your feeble skills are no match for the power of the Seaside

Today I'm sharing a project I made quite some time ago, but never got around to documenting. I made it to wear on my birthday, which was almost two months ago! Today I went to see the two giants who were going around Antwerp (an amazing show by Royal de Luxe), and right before that we quickly took a few pictures in the park.

I had this fabric in my stash for a while before I figured out what to do with it. It's a digitally printed cotton sateen from a painting by Josef Israëls, and because the panel was so big it was hard to find a pattern that would work with it. I didn't feel like chopping up innocent children!

We recently had a few patterns by La Maison Victor go on sale in the shop, so I picked up the gig dress and went to town. At first sight it seemed like this would be a quick and easy dress to put together, but there were some hiccups along the way, partly due to my fabric choice. I glanced over the instructions and quickly decided to ignore them completely, since they had you gather everything with elastic, even though none of the gathered bits need to be able to stretch.

I will threateningly walk towards instructions that make no sense

This dress is basically made up from a front and back with gathers at the bust and center back, connected by shoulder pieces that. These shoulder bits have a facing, sort of like a shirt yoke, and this was another part where the instructions seemed needlessly fussy. They have you attach the front and back to the shoulder yokes, sew the yoke facings on one side and then turn the whole thing partly inside out to sew the other side. I chose to sew the yokes to the front, attach the facings with right sides together (stopping before the seam allowance at the back), turn everything, sew the yokes to the back, tuck the facing seam allowance in and handstitch it closed.

There were gathers on top of the sleeves as well but they looked so puffy I took it all apart and removed them. I also removed the gathers in the back, taking out almost 20 cm of width and sadly slicing off part of a child's face.

It sounds like I'm not very happy with this dress, but I think it's a good example of how you can try and work through fitting issues. I hated the dress straight out of the envelope, partly due to fabric choice but also because it really wasn't working on me. Thankfully it turned out all right in the end! It was perfect for a day like this.

We had a small picknick in the park and then joined the crowds to see the giants. There were SO MANY PEOPLE but it was so beautiful! I didn't take any pictures at all, so I'm stealing some from my friend Karen, who stayed for the weekend and got even closer with our cat:

We were joined by a few other friends, and at first it looked like we weren't going to see much. The park and surrounding streets were just crammed and it was hard to move through the crowds with all the bikes and strollers. It felt a bit like this at times:

But then we managed a few shortcuts and got a lot closer to the grandmother giant! This theatre company has been in Antwerp a few times now, but it still amazes me. The puppets are obviously puppets, and even though you see the people controlling them at all times they are incredibly alive somehow. I can't wait until they come back!