What Have I Been Doing?

Last week there was no Fabulous Free Pattern Friday post and the Sleeves On Saturday post was missing as well. Shame on me!! So what was I doing? I was making a dress. I attended a very special party on Saturday night and I wanted a new dress to wear. Of course I did not need a new dress, but I wanted a new dress.
Back in January I was in Denver and of course I had to visit Denver Fabrics. While I was there I found this wonderful piece of fabric.

The picture really doesn't do it justice. It's a grey metallic and the roses are a mohair wool.
While I was there I also found this piece of embroidered net. Both pieces were in the remnant bin!!! Score!

If you look closely, you can see that there are small black sequins.

Both fabrics are lovely on their own, but when the net was placed on top of the metallic, wow!

I didn't have a lot of time to get the dress finished, so I decided to use a pattern that I've used before, an old Anne Klein pattern.

I thought that the dress on the far right would work best since I did not want too many seams.

I underlined the dress with a china silk. Worked beautifully.

Everything was pinned and then basted together.

I wanted as few seams in the net as possible. In order to not cut into the embroidery, I sewed the side seams up as far as I could before I would need to incorporate the netting and I hemmed the dress

Lots of hand stitching later,

I had a finished dress.

 Here's a little better picture of the embroidery overlay.

I was determined to use what I had on hand, but I really wanted a silk charmeuse lining. The fabric gods were on my side. Buried on the bottom of my lining box was a lovely piece of grey silk charmeuse. Perfect!

The sleeves and the neckline were piped in black velvet.

The dress has already been worn twice, the party on Saturday night and then to the opera on Monday night. It's the perfect little dress to slip on whenever I want something a little special but still a little understated.
Just to let you know, I will be here tomorrow for Fabulous Free Pattern Friday. I have a fun little item to share with you.