It's been a weekend of your amazing creations!! Once the book pages are FedExed tomorrow, I'll be back on the machine gettin' stitchy with it! Woo!! Fabulous Jody sent this my way and I was immediately obsessed. Obsessed because it involves school costumes - I can still remember dressing up like Tinkerbell in a costume that my mom made for a Disney assembly in third grade. We put big pom poms on the ends of silver spray painted ballet shoes...must find photographic evidence to share!
My 4th grader needed an Abigail Adams costume for a school project but being a thrifty soul, I wasn't about to rent or buy one. My daughter and I researched dress styles during Abigail Adams' time and looked at many images of her online. Then we went...into the attic. Dun-dun-duh! My attic, you see, contains tubs upon tubs of garments that would keep you in New Dress A Day projects for 3 years. Both my daughter and I could see the potential Abigail Adamsness of it, so we printed out the pictures and went to work.
Look at this awesome before shot!!
Just wait till you see how this turns out!
First, we remodeled that neckline. Kiddo didn't want a turtleneck, and many dresses of the Adams' time did have a square neckline so we cut out the schoolmarm white, added a flowery hint of thrifted pillowcase with a lace edge, and then we cut open the skirt and used the other pillowcase to make a matching underskirt.
Next, we took off the bottom ruffle of the dress and transformed the fabric into tight sleeve with a wide cuff of lace off an old bedskirt.
We worked on the dress for one very long afternoon, and she got fabulous marks for her costume and the accompanying report she did about Abigail Adams. (Note: I did not help her with the report, and she dictated the changes to the dress herself. I just provided the seamstressing!)
Your little gal did amazingly well - way to nail the report and the changes to the dress! Jody, I totally want to take a vacation to your attic! Nothing sounds more fun than going through all those goodies :)
