I often ask DD1 if she needs anything on a seasonal basis, and if so, what she would like to have in her closet.  Well, this little number from Burda’s February 2014 Tough Love collection caught her eye, and after looking at laces around town, we gave up on it because we just couldn’t find the perfect mix of mesh-lace-knits or what have you (Burda suggested two layers of mesh, but I  – being mom – suggested something more modest.)

Then, around Hallowe’en time, I wandered into my local Fabricland, and there was a remnant of this lovely spider web lace draped on a mannequin over fluorescent orange satin, and I grabbed it for $5, brought it home and had her look at it.  She loved it, and I made up the mesh overdress with the side ties pronto.  (As an aside, there was a bolt of this lace the first time we were looking for fabrics and she didn’t like it; I thought it was perfect because she hates flowery lace and this is so unusual.   But she’d forgotten she’d seen and dismissed it by the time the remnant came home….. 😀 ) I bound the neckline and the sleeve edges with bias silk chiffon.  The side ties are bias tubes, inserted through channels created by sewing narrow strips of fabric along either side of the side seams.  They can then be pulled to create ruching as the wearer desires.I left the hem edges raw, and the seams were double stitched and serged, pressed to one side and topstitched down in order to give some strength to this very holey lace.  The shoulders have channels with ribbons tacked down to create ruching, too.Then the overdress sat waiting for the perfect underdress fabric, which I eventually found on EOS. It’s a rayon-lycra doubleknit in two shades of grey.  I wanted this to be reversible, and decided to do a flat-fell seam with raw edges.  I don’t own a coverstitch machine, and this would have been the perfect project for it.The sleeve edges and hem were simply turned up and stitched with a stretch stitch, and the neckline was faced with a narrow strip of self-fabric cut on the cross grain, turned to the inside, and topstitched.  After pulling it on and off the mannequin and DD1 for fitting, I’m starting to see little fuzzy bits of yellowy-beige fibres  (which must be the lycra) along the unfinished edges. Here’s the dark side.It’s a perfectly respectable T-shirt dress on its own, although DD1 says it feels like a nightgown when she wears it without the overdress.  *whatever*  Here’s a couple of pics to show the light and dark side of the force underdress.

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I personally prefer the dark side.  Here’s the back.