self-made slip dress, Nevada top, Oura ring.
it was the ’90s. i was in my pre-teen and teenage years. i used to draw girls wearing different clothes on sheets upon sheets of A4 paper. i pretended that they were fashion magazine spreads, and always had them titled, according to the theme of the clothes i drew on them. i used to even have a set of ‘imaginary models’ (ie. the girls that i drew) that i’d sometimes use over and over again for different ‘fashion spreads’.
when grunge music started to become a trend, so did the ’90s fashion come to its peak: flannel shirts, Dr. Martens boots, choker necklace… and one trend i never forget was slip dresses + t-shirts.
that last combo made it to one of my imaginary ‘fashion spreads’, and i titled it ‘Flowers and Stripes’. it seemed like such a big hit back then, wearing stripes and flower-print, though now that i think about it, it was basically ‘any prints that clash = wear them together’.
the funny thing is, though, because i was such a shy teenager back then, i never did wear a slip dress + t-shirt. the t-shirts i had back then were all loose and baggy, i only wore a tight one for personal photo shoots (that sounded much more fancier than it actually was. these photo shoots were actually done by my sister’s classmates just so that they could practice their photography skills, so they needed ‘models’… my sister and i were often their ‘victims’). in other times, my fave attire was baggy jeans & baggy t-shirts. i never owned a Dr. Martens either.
but suddenly, now, in 2022, the slip dress was back on trend. and i happened to have this flowery viscose satin fabric lying in my closet. it was only about a meter long, and summer 2022 had just started, so i wanted something quick and easy to make.
i found a gazillion tutorial/DIY sewing instructions for slip dresses online, none of which was easy enough for my taste. 😂 i wanted shortcuts everywhere, and yet my fabric wasn’t enough for me to make bias tapes for the straps. i didn’t want to use ready made bias tape either, i wanted the straps to have the flower pattern!
well, needless to say, it was a huge mistake as the straps would never be as neat & tidy when not done on a bias cut. i used my overlocker for the hem, and because the wrong side of the fabric is white, i used white thread. it was a trick i learned from a stranger at my work place, and i think that went okay. the shape of the dress is awkward, because i did not use any pattern in the end, and just cut A shaped pieces for the front and back. it ended up too baggy in all the wrong places, so i had to tuck in the sides a couple of times! but whatever. i have a slip dress now!
and i had fun living it up like the ’90s just for taking these pictures.
and of course i had to use a striped t-shirt underneath it, otherwise it wouldn’t feel authentic.
so apparently the flowers had gone to my new slip dress. but honestly, i had another thing in my mind when i wrote this blog post’s title.
i am noticing that many sewing bloggers i used to follow have stopped updating their blogs. i don’t know if they had the same problem as i did, or other things in their lives that prevented them from sewing as much as before the pandemic started. i found that one or two of them have ‘migrated’ to IG & deserted their blogs. but the rest, i really have no idea what happened to them.
i must say, i miss them. i hope that wherever they are, they’re safe and well, whether or not they’re still sewing.
Step Into The Silver Rain 