Hot! Hot! Hot!

This cartoon just creases me up!  It kinda says it all...

It was on a particularly hot day here that I noticed lots of really cute dress/tunic/top things that looked like they were floating.  Like no fabric was touching the person inside them.  This looked very appealing for 90 degree + days.  

I thought the fastest route to getting my hands on one of these enticing garments would be to just buy one!  Yup, I was ready to fork over cold, hard cash to have one of these floaty things in my closet.  Well, do ya think I could find one?  Oh sure, I found some that were inappropriately short, many made of really horrible fabric...cool and polyester do not go together...and some that were, well, meh.  Even in 90 degrees one must maintain some standards.

So, it was off to the fabric store.  Since I was sans dress form at the lake, I decided to check the pattern books.  (I wasn't in the mood to mess around making a pattern, I wanted immediate gratification!!)  Simplicity came through with just what I had in mind.

Doesn't it look cool and floaty?!  And the bonus was the bralette pattern that was included.

I knew I wanted a natural fiber and something really, really drapey, something like rayon challis.  Well, do you think I could come up with one bolt of rayon anything?  Nope.  So it was back to the stash.  Which meant my simple, throw it together drapey dress would have to wait until a trip back into town. (This has been the story of my sewing adventures this summer.  I am going to have to come up with a better system next summer.)

I had a couple of nice choices in my rayon box, BUT now that I had a pattern for a cute sports bra I just had to find something that would coordinate with one of the rayons...AND I needed to find TWO things because the bra looks really great with a stretch lace on the back!  (so much for my simple, immediate gratification project!)

I didn't give up...I was determined to have a cool, floaty dress before the weather turned!

The dress has virtually no fitting, so it went together very easily.  And the rayon draped and pressed really nicely for the bias bound edges and straps.  

The bra, on the other hand took a couple of trial balloons.  (no pictures here, suffice it to say the bound armholes and neck edges needed a bit (a lot) of stretching to actually hold anything in place!)  Once I figured that out, and made the next size down, I had something I was really pleased with.  I may not make another drapey dress, but I will definitely make more bras.

I will share pictures of the finished products...I am quite happy with both the dress and the sports bra and ready for the next heatwave!

 ...the last little wrinkle in this saga..."What is that ugly footwear about?!"  "YIKES!!!"

So it turns out that when you go to the doctor because you can't get your shoe on...they GIVE you one!  Diagnosis = broken toe....Cause = furniture toe collision!  Ouch!  

So for the next six weeks I will be sporting this lovely accessory.  (what goes with black velcro?)