Seersucker and Fuchsia

Is "fuschia" not really a color? Because Safari's automatic spell checker is kirking out over here. Safari MUST be a dude.

EDIT: Apparently, half the world and I have been misspelling fuchsia as fuschia. Most annoying part? Autocorrect just NOW corrected it, but not the first time I fought with the spelling. English teacher fail.ure.

Wife: "Honey, is this more of a white or an ivory?"
Husband: "What's the difference?"

Crikey, I can't even get my husband to tell the difference between "husband, these already look awful, so they can be worn to change oil, catch a fish, or roll around in the grass" shorts and "husband, these are nice, unstained, and worth a pretty penny, so if you wear these, I will spritz lemon juice in your eyeballs" shorts. As if I could get him to tell the difference between colors. Unless it's the paint color for a Corvette. Or any vehicle.

I digress.

P.S. It's our two year wedding anniversary tomorrow. However, we've been together for a total of nine whopping years. Hot diggity dog.

I wore this outfit the other week to run errands, one of which involved a trip into Kohl's. Obviously.

Typically, I avoid shorts because they give me unnecessary wedgies. Not like any wedgie is actually necessary. Unless you ask my brother who hanged me by my pants on a doorknob...for two and a half hours. He felt that wedgie was necessary.

Whew, what a manhating post.

Look! A cute puppy!

As for the outfit, here 'tis.

The Look:

Seersucker Shorts: The Limited

Top: The Limited

Flats: Target

Belt: Target

The Details:

Occasion: Errand running (read: shopping)

When: Day time (so, casual it is)

Where: About town

Comfort Rating: Any outfit involving shorts automatically earns an 8 or less. These shorts are just the right length, so an 8 they earn. However, I should give the outfit a 7 only because trying to untuck a shirt and undo a belt in a dressing room is annoying because retucking and belting is sucky. Not an easy access outfit for the purpose of trying on other clothes. 

Note: Originally, I put on a white shirt with these shorts, a brown belt, and brown shoes. (I like the brown, white, and blue combo.) Buuuut, I decided to switch up the color combination a bit and choose fuschia instead. Is that okay? It's okay if you say no. I'll still like it. And you. 

Oh, and hoo-ray for the first day back for teachers. 

I turned two dresses into skirts.

I had these two dresses sitting in my closet. Well, one of them was actually in a sewing basket all folded up. Allow me to clarify something: I do not like strapless dresses. 

One, I have nothing with which to hold up said strapless dress. 

Two, they create these weird indentations above my chest (or lack thereof.)  I think they serve as a reminder of how not well endowed I am. 

Three, it is not cute to be constantly pulling up a dress or top, which is why I decided against a strapless wedding dress. I had one encounter with a strapless dress for prom one year. I was so ill equipped to wear this dress that I had to be velcroed into it, like 1/4" thick velcro strapped into that thing, and it still kept falling down. 

Anyway, I knew I would never wear these dresses as dresses, but I could part with neither the lovely black and white striped silk nor the blue and white striped seersucker fabrics. Finally, after allowing these dresses to sit around unworn for YEARS, I decided to bite the bullet and make skirts. If the mission failed, I really would have lost nothing since I wasn't wearing them anyway.

I went on a hunt and found this tutorial that didn't require removing the zipper in order to fashion a skirt. 

She does a fine job of instructing, so I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I will tell you a few tips/notes/things I learned during the process.

1. Try on the dress first and zip it up to where you want it to be as a skirt. Make sure it would look normal; otherwise, this dress might not work for your purposes. 

2. I have no idea how this process works on non-zippered (haven't taken that venture yet) or non-strapless dresses. 

3. If you have two layers to the dress, make sure that, after you chop off the top, you sew the layers back together again. (I made this mistake, and it was not fun to fix.) 

4. If your seams aren't perfect, just wear a wide belt over the top and no one will know. Muahaha. 

A good "seamstress" is even better at hiding her mistakes. 

Here is a "before" shot of the seersucker dress. I didn't put it on because I couldn't actually zip it up over my ribcage, so I took the before shot while it was on a hanger. 

Before (Seersucker "dress"):

The top felt all crinkly. No me gusta.

After (seersucker skirt):

My "sort of" before picture of the striped silk dress:

You can see the top of the dress poking through the shirt. The problem? You can see the dress straight through the shirt. Plus, the top was still uncomfortable.

After (striped silk skirt):

One of my attempts to prevent myself from shopping is to refashion my unworn clothes. 

I think these two attempts were successful, and now I've been bitten by the sewing bug!

Do you have a favorite? If you think they look horrible, don't tell me. I want to float on my "I sewed something that's not falling off of me" cloud for awhile longer.