Sweat Shop Weekend

I'm pretty sure that I have the best Mother-in-Law in the world.  One that would fly all the way over here from Idaho Falls for 2 days just to work on a dress for me.  One who would take time off of work as well, and stay up until midnight each night (as well as all day) sewing.

Yep.  She's amazing.

And our living room was basically turned into a sweat shop all weekend long while she worked. I tried to keep up her energy with peanut M&M's, back rubs, and water so she wouldn't kill over. I think I still need to do more than that.

And since she was piecing together like 3 different patterns to make this dress for me, I really owe her big time.

I have had the most difficult time trying to find the perfect dress for my album cover photoshoot coming up at the end of May.  We are shooting at this location (Paramount Theater in Seattle)...

And trying to achieve a photo similar to this one (from a Dior ad shot at Versailles, France)....

I had previously bought this dress, with the intention of filling in the back with white fabric (for modesty):

But the more I tried it on and tried to think of a way to alter it tastefully, I just couldn't do it. So I sold it.

So back to square one.

Did some more looking online, and found this gorgeous chiffon one-shouldered dress that Blake Lively wore.  It had beautiful lace trim and it was stunning.  I thought I could order a "copy" of it from a dressmaker online, buy two of them so we could take matching fabric from the extra dress to make a small cap sleeve on the left side....

And then when my dresses came, they were....uh...not as pictured.  The sizes were WAY off.  And I didn't like the color.  I tried and tried to figure out a way to make the dresses work as is...either replacing lace, redoing stuff, and in the end I decided it would be better to put the dresses up on eBay fully in tact and start from scratch.

Whew.

So Sandy, my wonderful kind talented mother-in-law, who also happened to sew my skirt for my first album photo shoot, agreed to make the dress from scratch. 

I don't even want to admit how much time I've spent looking online for the perfect material, color, and lace.  But yes, I did, and we now have everything to make a perfect version of the dress for me.  

The dress isn't finished (poor Sandy is going to have to finish it in Idaho Falls), but we got the underneath layers all done and fitted.  I'll post the final pics when it is all done. 

All I can say though is this whole dress hunt has been an expensive mistake, and I hope someone buys my dresses on eBay :) Haha.

 I also decided to do an altering job I needed to get done, while Sandy was here. I am not a seamstress, but I daydream about making awesome dresses someday.  

Anyway, last Fall I bought this BCBGMaxazaria dress to wear to a red carpet event, and then decided to save it for later.  But the problem was that the neckline was way too low.  

Here is a photo of me in the dress last Fall even with  a tank top on, and you can see how low the neckline is.

So what I ended up doing was cutting the sleeves to 3/4 length, and using the material to create more "V" in the neckline.  

I'd say for someone who is not the best at sewing (me!), I did an okay job. Just as long as nobody looks at the inside of the front of the dress to see my hack job, I should be okay.

In other news, Friday night we had James and Elizabeth and kids over for dinner (they brought us dinner, actually!).  It was a lot of fun. I have to apologize for the photo quality - these days we seem to use our mobiles for pictures more than our camera...

 Gwenever had a 2-night slumber party with Preston and Taylor, and they had way way way too much fun.  I don't think they all went to sleep until about 11:30 despite our efforts to get them to be quiet and snooze.

 On Saturday, Will took Dan and the kids up to the mountains and they went on a short little hike...

And finally, to fully understand the following photos...

You must know that Will entered a contest of creativity to win those limited-edition running shoes that are worth $200.  He can explain in more detail, but the soles have the trail notes of the winner from last year's Western States 100.  They only made 106 of them.  Anyway Will won the contest, of course, because he always wins everything he enters (I'm not joking) and he was overjoyed to get his little surprise in the mail last week.  And since he will never be wearing these shoes for reals, Taylor got to try them on.

And with that, we bid you all goodnight!