Bunny Ears Are For Losers

My family usually has a big gathering around Easter, as lots of families do. It's not a super fancy affair but I had the idea for this outfit in mind for a while, and sometimes you just need a reason to make something, right?

So here is my black lace crop top and skirt ensemble. Because it was my goal to look like a goth curtain (or Spanish widow?) on Easter.

I got this lace at Pauwels when it was still there (eternal sadness) and kind of knew from the start this was what I wanted to do with it. It's a pretty heavy duty lace that feels like cotton (and pressed like cotton) with a nice drape. I decided to play with the transparency by underlining the skirt and leaving the top sheer. Risqué!

I used a Burda dress pattern I've made twice before as the base for the top pattern, shortening (and narrowing) the sleeves, lowering the neckline a tiny bit and taking a chunk out of the back to make it a bit less boxy. The lace was opaque enough for the seams to not be too jarring, so I just finished them with a zig zag stitch. I did trim and finish the bust darts instead of just pressing them down! All the edges and hems are finished with narrow black bias tape. and then handstitched down.

The skirt is my trusty full circle skirt, shortened considerably. I cut this way longer at first (and had to do some real pattern tetris to get everything out of my yardage!) but ended up chopping about ten cm off because I felt the boxy top with a kneelength skirt was too frumpy.

The entire skirt is underlined in a thin black cotton. I used a plain black cotton poplin for the inside of the waistband since the idea of having the lace up against my bare skin all day didn't seem like a good one. The skirt closes with a hand-picked zipper and a big button on the side!

Wearing the lace top by itself was a bit too much, so I shortened a spaghetti strap top I already owned to make it slightly shorter than the lace. It took maybe five minutes and works like a charm!

It was too cold to wear this outfit as intended, so I kept my cardigan on for most of the day. I did attempt to play baseball in this, and I'm pretty sure the dreadful results of that have more to do with my abysmal catching, hitting and running skills that with the actual outfit!