Dolce and Gabbana Inspired: Red Lace and Tweed Romper

So this post is a little window into the creative process. I was stumped on what to do next after the Red Lace Dress I made a few days ago. I knew I wanted to incorporate some tweed into the next look not only because there was tweed in the D&G runway show, but also I liked how the red lace looked when placed over some houndstooth pants that I bought at a thrift store.

Most of the time when I get an idea for a project, I get a pretty clear picture of what I want in my head. Sometimes, I have to draw it out on paper. However, this time, neither of those processes was helping, so I actually draped my dress form with material to try to figure out what I was doing. I'd never done that before. 

Okay so here is the first pair of pants that I used to make a quick bodice. (I used another dress I own to make the pattern for the bodice.)

See, in my head, the bodice would be houndstooth and the skirt would be red, but I didn't love them together in real life when I draped them. I was afraid of that--hence the draping process.

So, I'm not sure if you have seen the Louis Vuitton show for fall/winter, but it has a couple tweed dresses with nude colored lace creeping around the hems, and I thought I might incorporate that look into my dress, but when I draped them (below), I couldn't get over how my dress was beginning to look more like the icky checkered/daisy "Sunday Meetin'" dress of the 90s.

I wasn't in love with covering the whole thing in lace either. It worked so much better when the dress was all red underneath. But I just really like the lace over houndstooth look, so I wasn't going to give up!

That was when I remembered I'd bought another grey tweed pair of fat man's pants at the thrift store too. I cut the legs apart at the crotch, cut the waist and pockets off, cut each leg apart down the inside seam, turned them upside down, sewed them together, cut the cuffs off, and made a skirt!

This was me trying the Louis Vuitton thing again. It was soooo not working! It's kind of an interesting idea, but when the lace is red, the hem-creeping thing looks clowny and dated. . .to me, at least. This one actually reminds me of Professor Umbridge from Harry Potter.

This was me seeing how it would look if both the greys showed through the red. Not digging it. Something about it, I kinda liked, but I couldn't figure out what.

For about 5 minutes, I gave up on the grey and tried this beige dress that I have that's too tight, but I don't want to pitch just yet. I dunno. I don't hate this look, but it wasn't what I was wanting to do. I wanted the houndstooth! 

I decided to sleep on it.

(Okay so in the next pictures, I skipped ahead to the very end product because once I figured out where I was going, I was too "in the zone" to take pictures! Also, I'm sure you are bored of looking at these so. . .)

I ended up not making a dress at all! I made a romper instead. Actually, I was completely done with the sleeves, bodice, and skirt and was about to hem the bottom when I realized that the skirt (having been made by two pant legs turned upside down) flaired out weirdly in the middle of the bottom hem, so I just cut it a little more, and sewed up the crotch into shorts. Then, I realized that I had no way to get into it, and I had to cut the back bodice down the middle and install a zipper! After that, I realized that I wanted pockets, so I copied the cuffing of the sleeves and sewed two cuffed pockets to the outside of the legs. I did this stupidly AFTER sewing the crotch up, so I had to finagle the machine through each pant leg! (I could have just taken the crotch seam out, but I have no idea where I put my seam ripper, and I was too lazy to do it properly.)

The last step was pegging the hem of the pant legs.

Now for some details. 

Here is the zipper in the back. I left it exposed because it was grey and I liked the look of it. Also, notice the symmetry of the flowers, especially the one in the middle that is bisected by the zipper. I was proud of that. I didn't do symmetrical flowers on the front, because the bodice is so short and the neckline is too scooped. There was no good place to put two symmetrical flowers, if you catch my meaning.

The back "skirt" has a pleat. This helps with range of motion and allows for easy on-and-off, but isn't bulky.

Blogger puts my pictures in sideways sometimes, for some reason. Anyways, this is a sideways view of the pegging of a pants leg. It needs to be ironed! I always forget these things when I'm taking pictures. . .

Okay, so I actually cheated on the cuff of this pocket. It is actually made from the bottom cuff of the original pants' leg. That was just one step that was already done for me, so I decided to use it!

On a dress form.

I cheated on the cuffs of the sleeves the same way! They are actually the cuffs of the original pants!

The End!