Frocks of festives past

As I am currently making up my festive party frock for this year's work do and thought  it would be a good time to take a look back at my past party frocks.

Last year's themed Christmas party was the 60's.  As luck would have it I had oh roughly about 30 vintage 60's patterns lying around, so the only difficulty was choosing which one to use. I had been keen to make this shift dress pattern up for a work dress, however, it seemed more than suitable for a party frock. 

The version I was doing of this pattern involved creating a loose tie at the back. The problem was that I used a cotton sateen and when you tied the pieces together they stuck out in awkward directions.  So instead I crossed the pieces over and then just attached them with a bronze button, which seemed to work.  I teamed it with some sheer pink pantyhose (too hot to wear tights in Qld summer alas) and made some dangly earrings.

The year before that we had a Mad Hatter themed party for work. Some people went all out with Alice in Wonderland theme but I just decided on a hat as far as theme went. I just fashioned my hat from an existing one I had and put tulle around it and placed some decorative birds in my hat.  I'm sure I'd seen something similar in an old movie once and I just wanted my hat to look a little demented. Alas I forgot to get a photo of the hat which is a shame. I don't think anyone at work got it.  One other year the work party theme was something starting with B or N and I decided to go as a bride, obviously, but all in black. I even had an excellent proper wig my friend Michael did up for me and theatre make up to look a bit gruesome. No-one got that ensemble at all. I thought it was pretty excellent myself. I kept telling people, "black it's the new white".

So back to the Mad Hatter party. I used New Look 2444. Now this pattern seems to be a much loved one from what I’ve seen on sewing blogs. It’s not a bad pattern it just isn’t a great pattern for me personally.  While I’ve only made up two versions of this dress one with sleeves and one sleeveless I just felt the pattern lacked something.  I decided to make up this two tone version for the party.  The material I bought from Lincraft looks a bit like shot silk but is simply a nice cheap synthetic around $10 per metre if I remember correctly.  This is a basic pattern so it comes together very easily.  I decided to embellish it with my own creation of a flower.  This is pretty easy to do. I just cut out leaf shapes and a circle, then ran around the outside with a zig zag stitch. Even though I’m quite proud of this dress I’m not sure it’s one of my better creations.    

The bodice material was more of a teal but has come up as blue in the photos.

I guess in some respects it looks like I am missing a petal on my flower - oh well.