Throwback Thursday: The Best Mullet Dress (of DOOM)

Hi-low hem dress. Mullet Dress. Tomato. Tomah-to.

I’m not sure how the rest of the world feels about this trend, but I flippin’ love it. I don’t know if it’s because asymmetry is fun or I like the idea of a butt flap. Either way, I knew I was destined to make and rock the mullet style. Imagine my excitement as I saw McCall’s come out with their 6504 pattern:

Super-cute mullet mania

I decided this pattern HAD to be mine and I had to have it right away! Well, that wasn’t possible since my local Joann’s never stocks the latest patterns until probably a month or two after their initial debut (I’m giving you the shifty-eye now, Joann’s!). I then tried Hancock but alas, they did not have my size. I search HIGH and LOW (haha, get it?) for this pattern in my size during the $1 sales and I finally snatched it up at Hancock’s after weeks of trying!

Now that I had the pattern in my possession, I had to determine where would be a good place to wear this as I ain’t fancy all the time. My engagement party seemed like a great event for this!

Bridesmaid love ❤

I bought the fabric at Joann’s on a whim way before I had the pattern. I fell in love with the color and crazy print and also wanted to try sewing with a shiny, satin-like fabric.

You can see the butt flap better in this picture. 😉

I love how it looks from the back:

The fabric is great as it flows gracefully behind me as I prance… er… walk around.

But not all is great about this fabric. Since it’s a satin material AND shiny, it shows EVERY imperfection and seam pucker imaginable. Lucky for me, the print is busy enough that you can’t tell too much when I wear it.

This dress has a bajillion pieces to cut out and sew together, so I wouldn’t recommend sewing it in a striped or less-busy print. There would be crazy mis-matching going on with all those seams.

This was made before I knew of the magic of invisible zippers. Just looking at the zipper on this dress hurts my head. It’s not so pretty in real life, folks.

I do have a riveting story to share with you about this dress. It almost did not get made in time for the big party! I started her off on my first sewing machine (Brody McBrosephson, a Brother XR4040), but an unfortunate event happened halfway through. Brody died on me. Kaput. The computer pooped out and then he was just 11 pounds of dead dreams. He actually decided to leave this world during our Christmas Sit and Sew gathering (yes, I belong to an AWESOME sewing group). I was in shock and crushed… and S&S ladies, I apologize for bawling my eyes out at the time.

I of course was freaking out because I had an important dress to finish as well as a small mountain of me-made Christmas gifts, too. My sewing guru, Dana, was gracious enough to lend me her Husquvarna Viking, Oscar, to finish the job. THANK YOU, DANA!

So I set back to work, trying my best to learn a new machine and get this thing DONE. As I was getting ready to put the facing in the dress, I realized it was completely the wrong shape! I scratched my head, trying to figure out what could have gone wrong, then it dawned on me. When I was fusing the interfacing to the facing pattern pieces, I realized the fabric didn’t quite match the interfacing, so I trimmed it to MAKE it fit. This is a very, very bad thing to do! The reason why the fabric was different is because it must have shifted when I was cutting the pattern piece. I wasn’t very careful while cutting out the fabric – not keeping it straight and steady, not pinning it like a madwoman, not cutting it on the flat. That was before I realized how very IMPORTANT it was to keep silky, wiggly fabric steady while cutting.

After I realized my idiocy (and not having enough fabric left over to start with a new pattern piece), I went to work Frankenstein-ing that darn facing to MAKE it fit!

IT’S ALIIIIIVE!!!!! Come on, it really does look like a pieced-together freak of nature, right? At least it’s on the inside and no one else has to know… ummm… except you I guess…

I’m glad to say it turned out to be a happy ending as I was able to wear this to my engagement party and other holiday festivities! Yay!

Let’s celebrate with some party food, shall we?

Have you made something where all was going wrong, but in the end turned out a success? I want to hear your success stories!

-RED