Mid-Century Kitchen with Molly Starlite - Episode 6: How to Make Dress Straps the EASY Way!

Top strap is the underside; bottom
strap is the top side.

If you remember my how-to sew a swing dress post from last summer, you'll remember that I struggled to make straps that looked neat and finished and weren't interminably frustrating to make. After much trial and error, I finally found this method that doesn't involve sewing and turning fabric, isn't frustrating at all, and takes only minutes to make each strap.

That's right: using nothing more than a hot iron, an old bath towel, and a can of spray starch, you can turn a 4-inch wide by 18-inch long piece of cotton into a sturdy strap for dresses and tops in just a few minutes. The only sewing involved is a simple seam down the edge to secure it, but these things come out looking neat and clean and professional in literally just minutes.

Watch me make one here (my 5-year old was taping this, just to explain the videography on this one):

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I Made A Skirt!

I've never been great at sewing. Probably because I've never really sat down and tried to learn. Over the years, I've sewn simple things - curtains, pillows, a Nook cover, a stuffed animal here and there - and I've done alterations on existing clothing, getting them to fit me right, but make something from scratch? Nope.

But I did it!








I've always admired Pinup Girl Clothing's "Just Desserts" dress in pink, yellow, and black, but I've never been able to locate one in my size. Being the impatient person I am, I decided to make a replica skirt, but put my own twist on it.

So, earlier this month, I ordered a bunch of fabric from Fabric.com: 5 yards of black cotton, 4 yards of blue cotton (because I have plans for something else), three yards of pink cotton, and a yard of yellow cotton. The fabric got here a couple weeks ago, and I have been planning this project ever since. If you look at the Pinup Girl Clothing dress, you'll notice that the stripes alternate pink, yellow, black, all the way around. On mine, I decided to alternate them pink, black, yellow, black, instead. Then, I also decided that I wanted a gathered skirt, so I sat down and did some math and figured out what I wanted.

I first cut the panels out, accommodating for a generous seam allowance, since I am a beginner seamstress. I made the top of the panels 6 inches wide, and widened it out to 13 inches wide at the bottom. I made 16 panels: 8 black ones, 4 pink, and 4 yellow.

Yes, I do just sit around the house wearing these fancy dresses.

Next, I pinned them together in the right order, and then cut the waistband, cutting it 4 inches longer than necessary, you know, just in case.

Then, I sewed all the seams together on my machine, making one large piece of fabric. Then, I gathered the top, pinned it to the waistband, and sewed that together.

Next, I hemmed the skirt, going one panel at a time. I hemmed all the black panels first, then switched thread colors to pink, and hemmed all the pink panels, then switched again to yellow thread before hemming the yellow panels. I think this gave it a real finished look.

The final step was inserting the zipper. I measured and pinned where the zipper would be, then sewed the back seam of the skirt together up to where the zipper bottom would be. Next, because I am 'fraidy cat and didn't want to chance the zipper getting off somehow while I sewed, I hand stitched the zipper into place, then went over the stitches on the machine, both reinforcing the zipper seam and making it look more finished... AND I changed thread colors before sewing to the pink panel in the back so that the stitches on zipper seam can't be seen, either!





And that's it! I am thinking of adding a detachable ribbon to the back, but we'll see. My next project will be a similar skirt, but in black and the aqua blue fabric I bought. After that, I have plans for a wiggle dress using satin with a harlequin print and a back detail piece that I can't wait to share with y'all!

Petticoat Junction

When wearing a swing skirt, one of my main goals is maximum fullness. MAX POOFINESS. I've tried a lot of different things to achieve that fullness; most didn't cut the proverbial mustard. But this one simple trick got me the skirt volume I was looking for: I just pulled up the petticoat.

No, really. That's it. I took the waist band of the petticoat and pulled it all the way up until it touches the bottom of my bra band. This pulls the fluffy part upward, creating a base for the skirt to sit on, creating the lovely bell shape we all want. Here's a photo of what that looks like:

A photo posted by Molly Starlite (@sixstringlass) on Oct 16, 2015 at 2:00am PDT

Here's a before shot:

A photo posted by Molly Starlite (@sixstringlass) on Jun 1, 2015 at 5:01pm PDT

And and after shot:

A photo posted by Molly Starlite (@sixstringlass) on Oct 8, 2015 at 6:35pm PDT

See the difference? I am using the Babyonline Rockabilly Tulle Petticoat, and, full disclosure, I also sewed a couple more runs of tulle to the underside to give even more lift, mostly because I could not find a petticoat that was just the right fullness. I found that most that were advertised as fluffy were too fluffy and the rest tended to go flat. So I took this inexpensive one and added to it, and voila! POOFINESS.

We All Have Our Favorites...

As much as I have grown - fashion-wise - since embracing the pinup lifestyle, I am still drawn - as I think we all are, at times - to little black dresses. My 15-year-old self would be shocked - nay, stunned - to look into the closet of her future self and see pinks, yellows, greens, and blues; I wasn't goth, but my wardrobe as a teenager consisted primarily of black and, occasionally, red. Today, I am wearing one of my favorite dresses: the Pinup Girl Clothing Jenny dress in cherry border print. I really love this dress. The cut and color are so flattering; I feel like a princess every time I wear it.

I have a stupid-long torso. The waistline on most dresses hits me at least 4 to 5 inches above my bellybutton and my natural waist, so I have started buying clothes that are too big for me and then taking them in to fit my waist and rib cage circumference... and then they have the length in the waistband to hit me at my natural waist.

Such is the case with my cherries Jenny. I bought it as a 4X and then took it in 4.5 inches on each side and removed the boning so that it would lay flat under my bust, define my bustline, and have the extra three inches of length in the waist to reach my natural waistline. I have four other Jenny dresses - the orange border, and three of the four harlequin prints - and this cherry border fits the best of all of them. The red harlequin fits second best, mostly because it is a 3X I took in and de-boned it, as well. The others are all 2X, and are still a little big in the waist and sit a little too high.

Now, you might be asking how I can edit and modify dresses that cost what these do, and the answer is that I buy them used, or on clearance... at least the ones I have altered, anyway. The ones that I have paid full price for, new, from the pinupgirlclothing.com web site... I haven't altered those because the miser in me won't let me; guess I don't really trust my own sewing skills enough yet.

Taking these dresses in is actually fairly simple, even for the novice seamstress, like me. I think I may have used my sewing machine fewer than 25 times the whole time I've had it - six years or so. So, yeah, I don't sew much, but I still felt confident enough to tackle this project. All I did was put the dress on inside out and then put a pin at the point that would be narrowest and another pin at the top of the bust under the armpit where it would need to be to be fitted. Then, I took the dress off, and, still inside out, sewed a half moon shaped stitch from the waistline, in to the narrowest point, and then back out to the second pin in the underarm. Repeat for the other side, and you're done. Yes, there is a more complicated way of doing it that involves taking the lining apart and doing it the "right way," the way that a pro would do it. I am not a professional. I just left the extra fabric and ironed in flat toward the back of dress. I don't even notice it when it's on and nobody can see it.

The only issue that I have noticed with this method is that there ends up being a small "bunch" of fabric in the skirt area right below the stitch. No one has ever pointed it out to me, so I guess it's not noticeable except to me.

If you're even the slightest bit scared of doing this, I wouldn't recommend doing it. The thing I kept reminding myself was that I could undo it and get a pro to do it for me if it got too complicated or I got too frustrated. In the end, it was just a 15-minute procedure and I am thrilled with the results.

OTHER NEWS: I signed up for ispy. I have never been too big into makeup and will just use whatever I come across that I like... the only exception to this being in the case of foundation because my skin is pretty sensitive and will break out if I don't use Cover Girl foundation and powders. But beyond that, I am not too picky and I even like a lot of the Dollar Store brands like Jordana and Wet'n'Wild and e.l.f as well - if not better than - more expensive brands and products. (The main example of this is Wet'n'Wild's glitter lip gloss which is the bomb. Serious sparkle, not heavy, blendable to lipsticks... it's perfect and freaking hard to find.) But those are posts for another day.