We’ve got a fantastic wedding to attend on September 3rd. I finally bought my dress today, from J Crew (whose dresses I love.  This is to qualify all the “rar”-ing to come). It looks like this:

Alisanne dress in silk taffeta

It’s very pretty, with a crossed back. One of my favorite things about J Crew is that they don’t employ vanity sizing. I’m a 12 in dressmaker’s sizes, and I’m a 12 in J Crew. It makes life easy. What’s sort of a pain is that this dress, on sale, was $150. Given it’s silk taffeta, and fully lined, and I know it will last me a million years, I shouldn’t complain overmuch.

But then I see other crafty folk making up their own lovely little vintage dresses, courtesy of Collette Patterns (click here). Most notably, this one:

Eclair dress from Collette

I could really go all-out with the fabric and supplies. I could buy them from one of the high-fashion fabric stores in the garment district. All told, it would probably come to about the same cost as buying the dress ready-made.

But oh, if I were a seamstress, I could make it fit like the proverbial glove. Sigh.

Collette basically makes me want to have a much more personal relationship with my sewing machine. I really should get on that.