Mortem\’s Tricks or Treats: Twas The Night Before Easter…

And all through the cave, the creatures were stirring especially… me!I’m not very good at story telling.Nor with keeping blogs updated on a regular basis. Luckily, Goth Gardener has given me just the right motivation to get back into the swing once more. She began hosting this contest/competition for a most wonderful looking basket of gothy Easter treats… and truth be told, I am cutting that rather damn close, by literally a night. The rules: write about your perfect gothy Easter, or what you would put in a gothy Easter basket, or even yet, write a gothy Easter spooky tale.I was going to write about my perfect gothy Easter… but I thought long and hard, and being a mountain home shy of a hermit, I found that rather difficult to come up with. My perfect Easter would be a day spent home– much like any holiday sans Halloween; and much like any other holiday, I attempt to inject as much Halloween cheer into aspects of it.Easter egg decorating would consist primarily of ghoulish visions and jack o’lantern grins. Probably a lot of jump scares during the hunting of them…These don’t seem like original thoughts for a goth Easter. Nor are they particularly goth so much as they are Halloweeny…So, I decided to stick to what I do best: sew!I had this one on the back burner for a little while if you’ve been following my instagram, admittedly… but I finally got around to completing it and you know what, this entire ensemble would make a great Easter Sunday Best– for a goth!

Meet my version of New Look 6670 plus a matching hat!What a hassle it was to construct, but I’m so glad it’s finally done.It’s a two piece dress; the base dress which is a princess seam style sheath silhouette, and the over-skirt/belt. With the scraps I constructed a matching pillbox hat

I think my favorite part of this ensemble is the over-skirt; it’s a good piece to carry over into other outfits!Now for the technical talk– you can skip over this part if you don’t care about the pattern construction info:I chose view C and over skirt E. The shorter slightly less formal view than the others.So my main issue was the zipper, hands down the worst location for an open back dress, not to mention for a lapped zipper. At least for one with some swayback issues, such as myself. It was designed with this zipper dead center of the back. Blech. I sewed up the entire back, and attached the zipper in an invisible style to the side under arm.The finished dress could look much better, but truth be told, I just wanted to be done with it– seemed like an unlucky dress. Not only were new fit issues popping up during mock ups every time I adjusted one part of it, but my machines just didn’t cooperate with my material choice, which is a shantung sateen; no matter how many times I switched needles, cleaned it out or what have you. The dress sews up easily enough, and the instructions get a little vague in parts, but I’d assume you would tackle this if you have some sewing experience… so it’s not vague enough to throw an intermediate sewist off.

My bust size is significantly smaller than the size I needed to fit my waist and hips. I tried to fit at the bust and work my way out, but it made so many issues being princess seams and all. I had to constantly readjust the back portion of the strap to prevent the gaping, but as it would appear, it was not completely resolved. I wasn’t fully able to tailor this successfully, it was this dress that made me realize that I have shrunk down enough that tailoring on my dress form is no longer viable. I think that was the main problem why I was so unsuccessful in getting this “right”.So, like I mentioned, I used a black sateen shantung with recycled embellishments salvaged from past garments. The material itself was a large remnant piece sold to me in one big piece because I worked the cutting table at Hancocks, and because special privileges and whatnot (hah!). It had minor tears and tape adhesive stains throughout, but I managed to fussy cut my way into this dress. Not feeling great about the massive amounts of scraps, I bought some fabric yoyo makers from clove and started cutting out a bunch of yoyos to use as embellishments on the dress, but I decided against it since the lace I was going to use for the over-skirt belt (also purchased from Hancocks) was rather fussy to begin with. So in came the idea to make a pillbox hat. I drafted the rather easy pattern myself and used more of the scraps to make more yoyos and the hat, then proceeded to fill in gaps with black rhinestones that I had because they were damaged goods I was allowed to take while working at Hancocks (RIP).For sure not my favorite thing I have ever constructed, but probably not the fault of the pattern?.. Egads is it gorgeous, though! Even for its flaws.End of technical talk.

Like I said, if you were following my instagram (@mari_mortem) you would have likely seen the progress shots of the dress and the hat. If I had an event to attend for Easter, this is exactly what I would have worn, hehe!So, because I don’t know if this submission will meet the criteria of the contest, and we know my story telling abilities leave a lot to be desired… let me leave with a Easter time haiku a la mort:

I guess I better stick to my sewing machine, heh…Shoes revamped by yours truly, check out close ups in this link.Gloves from Claire’s