Boo Charms

Hello readers! Welcome back to another blog post about selfish sewing. This week is all about the Cotton + Steel Boo Charms cotton magenta fabric. I saw this fabric on Miss Matatabi's about a month and a half ago during some early morning insomnia shopping (yeah, that’s a thing). Mistakenly, I purchased only a yard and a half and had to purchase another two yards from fabric.com a month ago. Once I received my two other yards from fabric.com, I washed, hung, and ironed the Boo Charms fabric. I let this fabric sit in my stash while I worked on two bird dresses, a Pikachu dress, a dinosaur dress, and the ghost kitties dress, knowing that I wanted to save it to make a Halloween themed dress. So far, I've made two: ghost kitties and now boo charms. I will be making one more with a cool dyed grey fabric with bats on them that I picked up from Joanns last week. This week, I am working on a unicorn dress!

Anyway, more about Boo Charms. I decided to try something completely out of my comfort zone and try a new pattern - Simplicity 1419. This pattern seems very simple in construction because the skirt pattern is only three pieces with simple pleats. Also, it comes with pocket pattern pieces, that I have cut out and use for almost all of my dress projects! The bodice is high necked and a collar can be attached! - which was the main reason I wanted to try Simplicity 1419. I began cutting out the skirt, the bodice, the collar, and the pocket pieces.

I sewed up the bodice fairly quickly, but I realized that I cut for a 20 instead of a 22, and the dress was EXTREMELY tight and off by almost 4 inches. I only had about a yard  left after cutting out the pattern. I wanted to give up and just make a skirt, annoyed at my mistake I complained to my boyfriend and friends about mishap. Ray told me to get over it and try again, so I carefully cut out a new bodice piece with an extra two inches plus one inch of seam allowance. The other thing I had to do was cut down the high neckline so it wasn’t choking me. I sewed up the new and improved bodice and marveled at how well it fit now with the changes.

I sewed up the skirt and inserted the pockets without problem. I choose a magenta zipper the same color of Boo Charms to complement the dress. Sewing the zipper was a pain because of the high neckline so I made a mistake by sewing the two bodices pieces together. I had to seam rip the mistake and try again. The second time went on smoothly and I was able to do a decent job inserting the zipper! I hemmed the dress and its guts and gave the whole dress a good ironing. I added the collar and used Annika Victoria's tutorial on how to add a Peter Pan Collar to a dress as a guide to attaching this collar to the completed dress. I think the collar adds the level of cuteness I was wanting from this dress. Overall, I am happy with the result and cannot wait to wear it in October. Thanks for reading! Come back next week for the unicorn dress. <3