Making it Mine: My version of Lily`s dress in How I Met Your Mother

Here it is, my version of Lily's dress.



The entire story:

I'm a huge fan of How I Met Your Mother. Recently, I spent some time at my laptop, catching up on episodes I haven't seen, and I stumbled upon this red dress that Lily wore in an episode at the end of Season 3.



The instant I saw this dress, I wanted to recreate it. I tried to find an image of this dress so I could zoom in to see details, but this was tough! This is a 2008 dress, and I could not find a store that had it in stock. (I`m assuming stores don`t carry 5 year inventory.)

This meant I had to be content with recreating a similar feel - vs. copying the dress exactly. This was fine by me, I wasn't looking for a complicated project. Simplicity (the concept, not the pattern company) is good.

The sleeves in the inspiration dress reminded me of McCalls 6200 - a dress I`ve made recently (though without sleeves.) I went shopping for a red knit fabric, pulled out some leftover white knit, and got to work.

I cut the neck band and the sleeve band in white. I shortened the hem by 4 inches, and added a 4 inch strip in white. I cut a top red piece and a bottom red piece, splitting where the waistline was, and added a strip of white for the waist. Beyond that, I pretty much constructed this dress as indicated in the pattern (except, I stitched the neck bands together at the neck edge, based together and treated as one piece where it attaches to the dress.)

This should have been an easy dress to make, but the waistband took 2 iterations to get right. First iteration, too low on my waist. Second iteration, too loose. Aargh. Lots of seam-ripping and cursing happened.

Apart from that, this is a really easy dress to make...

I need to sew practical work things now, so readers, if I make another non-work-appropriate dress, please feel free to kick me.