Victory Patterns Chloe Dress

I made this dress for a wedding I went to over the summer, and I haven't worn it since.

When I put it on the other day, I smacked myself in the forehead and questioned my sanity in this choice. Because cuteness!

This dress is a bit of a departure for me style wise, as I'm most comfortable in full, gathered skirt. [More places to hide my clunky phone? assorted treasures? cookies?] But I decided to be a pioneer for myself and make something a little more fitted. I really loved the striped version on the cover of the Chloe Dress by Victory Patterns [and it has pockets!] so winner it was.

The main fabric I chose was Robert Kaufman's Essex cotton/linen blend. Because of the linen it can be a little bit wrinkly, but I just choose to refer to it as 'texturey,' and I am immediately relinquished of any ironing obligations. It's amazing!

I think what really makes this dress is the vintage floral print trim. The pattern already has the contrast binding around the neck and armholes and the pocket tabs, but I added the flat piping in the seams on the front and back. The fabric was a random scrap I had swiped from a fabric donation to my previous place of employment. Who knows where it's from or where it's been, but now it's in a dress in my closet. So there.

Also, if you're wondering why I'm holding my aforementioned clunky phone in some of these pictures, it's because I was using a new camera remote system. One thing I'm trying to get better at is taking pictures of myself in the garments I make. So I bought this allegedly nifty little device poetically named the Nikon WU-1A.

You plug it into the camera, download the free app, and connect your phone to the little device's wifi network. Then you can use the app as a shutter remote, see a live view of the shot, tap the part of the photo that you want to be in focus, and then download the pictures to your phone if you want. Sounds pretty cool.

HOWEVER.

I did not think of how absurd it would be to be holding a giant iPhone in all the pictures. It's kind of hard to hide, and it's also challenging to blindly push the shutter button on your screen, as any pre-front-camera-era selfie-taker knows. [Don't lie, you've done it.]

Also it seemed to have a horrible range, and the app constantly crashed, leading to several unplanned pictures that looked something like this.