Winter's Night dress

I'm sewing along with another season of Project Run & Play that starts today and the first challenge is a Winter Wonderland theme. I remember the very first time I experienced a real winter with snow when my husband started medical school in Iowa City many years ago. Growing up in Phoenix it's not like I had never seen snow in my life, but I had never experienced looking out the front window of my home at a peaceful, fluffy, evening snowfall. It seemed magical to me. The days after of brown slush and ice... not so magical. But I get it. I get "Winter Wonderland".


Now that we have been living back in the Valley of the Sun, winter is full of beautiful sun and fresh outdoors air. It's the time of year we are able to actually be outside and not melt. We do own jackets and long sleeves and I think a pair of thin mittens at the bottom of our dress up box, but most of the time those are unnecessary. My look for this theme needed to be something that Drew could wear here in our kind of winter, but I wanted to evoke the feeling of a peaceful "real" winter's night.


And maybe most importantly with this challenge (and with each challenge I actually finish in this season of PR&P) I am refusing to spend even a penny on any of my looks. Not so much as a button, zipper, or spool of thread. We are preparing for a cross-country move this summer (to Iowa City again of all places) and I either need to toss out my hoards of fabric or put them to use. So with my goal to evoke a winter's night feel and only using what I had on hand, I came up with this raglan chiffon number.






I was so tempted to run to Joann's to buy a spool of gray thread for all the topstitching on the dress since my spool of gray was just about gone, but NO. Not a penny. I had to use a turquoise thread that definitely doesn't match the royal blue chiffon, but guess what... you can't even tell. And we all know one spool of gray thread turns into a bag of freshly cut fabric, several cards of buttons, a couple bottles of craft paint, and who-knows-what from a place like Joanns. I have a problem.


This dress is very loved and has been worn much in its short existence. Next winter we will actually be in a Winter Wonderland, but for now I am enjoying every sunny minute Phoenix has to give.