MeMadeMay 2019 Day 8
“MeMadeMay (2019) day 8. Took a ‘lil excursion to Logan Square to sub for Red Hot Annie at a Women Belong meeting. Dressed extra cute for the occasion. These are the first full-length, adequately fit photos of my Very Hamilton Christmas Dress. Fabric is Mood Fabrics exclusive cotton sateen and feels so lovely.”
Hoo boy is this an unintentionally loaded post.
To serve as an extreme summary, Annie was my burlesque boss. For a while, she was part of the Logan Square circle of Women Belong, a women-focused small business networking group. On the occasions when she wasn’t available to make their monthly meetings, I was her designated stand-in.
On one hand, I appreciate what she was trying to do by including me, because I was also (sort of) a small-business at the time. I had been an on-and-off photographer for awhile at that point (I still take photos! Just not of people. They’re on my other website, Singing Raven Photography)
On the other hand, I was majorly a fish out of water, especially in a networking group populated mostly by real estate agents, other marketing professionals, and a not-small number of health and wellness-focused businesses. None of these are bad things! It’s just an odd group to be in as someone who mostly makes hard-sell esoteric art. (I told Kenneth not long ago that my elevator pitch only makes sense if you understand that the elevator is in freefall, crashing.)
Also, my entire experience and association with burlesque ended… in the most comedically traumatic way one could possibly imagine. Like, it’s been 5 years and for the first three I literally could not talk about it at all.
ANYWAY. The dress is Simplicity 4673, from 1954. I refer to it usually by its government name, A Very Hamilton Christmas Dress, because at the time I made it (for the holidays, of course), the initial fit was A MESS. The waist was too long and the darts were in a strange place and the skirt gathered sort of funny and it looked like an escapee from the costume shop of the Ottumwa, Iowa High School production of Hamilton Jr.
So I took it back apart, cut (I think) a quarter inch off the bodice waist and a quarter inch off the top of the skirt, moved the darts to where they were supposed to be in the first place, and put the whole thing back together. And it’s fantastic now. No complaints. It’s two different colorways of Mood’s print ‘The Passing of Adonis’ in stretch cotton sateen, which has held up quite nicely over the years.
My only issue with it nowadays is that I turned the neckline points a little funky, so they have a tendency to sort of warp if I don’t press it before every wear.
And in the last photo, we can see that I finally graduated to a smaller piece of spike tape holding my stupid fingers together. I definitely should have gotten stitches on that one, but you live and learn.
