A birthday dress with a back story

Another birthday, another birthday dress! I’m off on vacation so you get a scheduled post, but it’s my birthday today! Hip hip!

As I’ve done every year for 6 years now, I made myself a dress for my birthday. It’s possible I’m not actually wearing this dress right now since I’m likely in the mountains hunting down a waterfall as you read this. But this year’s birthday dress is one I really love and I’ll be wearing it sometime today, for sure!

This is another version of Sew-Easy Advance 2944, from 1963. I recently blogged about how in my second version (and here’s the first), I nailed down the fit after realizing the bodice was way too long on me. I knew I wanted to make another one this year. And then a plan all but fell in my lap.

Last year when we were in London at this exact time, I wore the second version for a glorious day* hanging out with sewing friends. Here we were outside the old location of the Sew Over It shop in Islington, April this time last year. 🙂

*I found it so glorious, upon re-reading last year’s blog post I see I used the same descriptor then, too. Ha ha!

In that photo, I’m carrying a bag that contained a length of beautiful fabric I bought at Sew Over It, a gorgeous Liberty (or I think actually a Liberty knock off of the Carline print) fabric. As you can see, Charlotte bought some, too! In fact, later that day I bought some gorgeous green Wollmeise DK merino, which I knit up into my green batwing sleeve bolero last month. I didn’t even remember that I’d bought the yarn that day since it’s a yarn I love and have in several colorways, until Charlotte reminded me!

Now around the same time I started to think about my birthday dress this year, I was thinking over that wrap dress pattern. And then I found out I’d won a prize from last year’s Vintage Pledge from Marie (who was mostly hidden by my head in the photo above!) which included more of the same exact fabric I’d bought that day. Everything suddenly came together, and I knew this year’s birthday dress needed to be made from the same pattern I wore to see my friends, in the fabric I bought with my friends, and was gifted more of from one of them. How perfect is that?!!!

So here’s this year’s birthday dress, in the fabric I was carrying in the photo above! 😀

(Of course, I did forget to wear the bolero with this dress, and they’re a perfect match. Definitely a combo I’ll have to remember for the future!)

I looooove when things come together like this!! And that makes it such a special dress to me.

I adore this dress, although this particular wrap dress pattern is a bit fussy to wear since it’s so open at the back. I’m not sure my previous version is as bad but this isn’t a cold-weather dress, so I haven’t worn the other one since last summer or fall and can’t recall for certain.

I promise, both the dress and my tattoo are centered. 😉 But the back view really is worth my niggling feeling that it’s moving around, as that V shape is so nice. Though it does make me want to try to find another wrap dress pattern with a higher back neckline. In the meantime I think it might be a good idea to make bra strap carriers in future versions so they don’t feel like they’re moving around, too.

The original pattern calls for a big patch pocket on the front, but I opted again for inseam pockets. Although this skirt is massive, so I do have to root around a little to find the pockets!

Wait, here’s a funny aside. I bought these pink flats (M. Gemi Fortuna style) specifically to wear with last year’s birthday dress (though that was a scheduled vacation post like this one, so here’s the post that actually shows me wearing the dress on my birthday). Even though we’d only been in London a few days by my birthday, I’d already managed to accumulate blisters on the very first day and thus couldn’t stand to wear these shoes. They were the only thing in my suitcase that never got worn on the trip.

So instead, I’m wearing them with this year’s birthday dress! 😉

Anyway, onto the neckline. It’s gathered into a bias binding only on the front, and it’s just the perfect amount of gathering. The instructions call for a facing and are just fussy as hell for no reason, so I learned in my last version to just make a bias strip and bind the neckline with that. This time, I topstitched instead of invisibly hand stitching, and mirrored with topstitching the sleeves, too.

This fabric is so wonderful to wear, and I think the only thing that could possibly make it better is if the flowers were red and not hot pink. But I do have some Liberty lawn in the red version of the Carline print socked away, and need to find the perfect pattern for it. In the meantime I will just go on adoring this dress!

Last year I was in London on my birthday, this year I sewed a dress inspired by London for my birthday. What do you think, London again for my birthday next year? Ha ha, guess we’ll see. 😉

outfit details

dress – made by me
vintage earrings – misc.
shoes – M. Gemi