Simplicity 2250 Cynthia Rowley

I'm sorry, but I'm too tired to find a quirkier, more imaginative title for this post. I'm too frustrated to even write this post. If you just want to look at some mediocre pictures, feel free to stop reading here. If you have the patience to read a long rant on my bad luck, grab a cup of coffee and here we go.

A while ago, I saw this fabric with tiny navy stripes had just arrived at my friend's fabric store and I immediately got obsessed by this Cynthia Rowley pattern I had bought last Spring. If you have never seen it, this fabric looks just the same as the dress on the envelope, which I've always really liked.

I guess I'm a pattern sample copycat?

 I had read many terrible reviews of this pattern, but I was too motivated to be scared by them.

So I tackled the pattern... and I realized I had bought the wrong size (cursing moment #1). I was so good at math at school that I still get surprised at how often I fuck up with inches to metric conversions. After a bit of facepalming, I decided to try to cut it anyway, since I still needed room for my chest and an FBA with this pattern is out of the question.

It's not an easy pattern by any means, but the construction went fine, all in all. I just had to take in the bodice a lot (about 10 cm) and I did it at the side and center back seams.

The finished dress sat in my wardrobe for a while, waiting to be photographed, until one day I went to the seaside and came back with a major facial breakout on my jaws and cheeks (cursing moment #2). I think I just had a bad reaction to the sunscreen lotion, but it looked so bad. I've struggled with acne since I was 14, and while my skin is far from perfect, it got so much better in my 20s. Having that red bumpy mess on my face once again made me feel so self conscious that I tried to take photos of me wearing the dress, but I couldn't bare to share them with the Internet (and cropping or blurring my face looked so creepy).

And that takes us to yesterday. My skin had healed (if you have acne-prone/oily skin, DO try cleansing it with oatmeal, it's miraculous), it was a hot yet cloudy day with (=good lighting) and I had all the afternoon for pictures. I took photos of this dress and for three more posts, which meant a total of 520 photos. I take a lot of them because I definitely prefer to edit down than to regret not having taken more. I also have to delete a lot of them, because as I don't have a photographer, I'm often out of focus or out of frame.

Anyway, while importing them on iPhoto, the files got corrupted. All 520 of them (BIG cursing moment #3). And I had already deleted them from the camera. I seriously wanted to cry, because despite losing more than an hour and a half of my time, there were some very nice shots in there. I don't know what happened, not even Google could explain it to me.

When I calmed down, I went back out and took more photos, but the clouds were gone, so the light was too harsh; my makeup had litterally melted so I looked less than fresh and I was too angry anyway to put some effort in this shoot.

So this long story explains why these photo are less than my favorite. But I either put this post up today, or I would have left this cursed dress out of the blog, which would have been a real pity, since I really like it. But is it really cursed? Is the universe punishing me for something, like, I don't know, having a taste for complicated patterns?

I'm just thankful that all of this doesn't happen for every garment I make, or I'd have stopped blogging long ago.

The end. You can have a pee break now.

If you have any question about the dress (since I barely mentioned it), please feel free to ask.