This girl made this dress in less than 2 hours.  Tutorial on her blog.  So simple, but elegant.

A while ago I hit up a high school marching band yard sale in Orem.  It was there that I scored 9 yards of black fabric for $1.25.  It was a cotton knit, so the possibilities were endless.

Fast-forward four months, Provo City and Allegiant Air threw a family-friendly red carpet party to launch their new flights to LA.  I needed something to wear, but didn’t have anything in my closet that spoke to me.  That’s when I remembered that fabric.  Inspired by some recent red carpet trends, I set to work and made my dress in about an hour’s time.

At the event with Camden.

One of my main inspirations was this Stella McCartney dress.  I had recently purchased a gold belt from ebay, and was excited to finally have something to wear it with.

My inspiration was this Stella McCartney dress.

I took this inspiration and decided that I wanted to keep it as simple as possible–I was short on time!  So I choose to go with an all black dress to avoid having to use multiple fabrics.  I took advantage of the stretchy jersey knit fabric, and came up with a dress that could slip over my head without requiring buttons or zippers.

To create the pattern, I used some of my current clothes.  I tried on the red shirt with my maxi skirt and decided how long I wanted the dress to be, and marked where the skirt sat on the shirt with a piece of tape.  (Unfortunately, I forget to add a few inches for my high heels.)

I then placed my “pattern” onto my fabric and cut around the edges, generously adding a few inches to create the seams and hem.  You can always take things in, but it is really hard to add additional space.  Keep that in mind!

The tape marked where to place the skirt for the pattern.
I wanted to add a train to give the dress more of a formal feel.  I used one of my older dresses with a train to help me create the pattern piece for the back.
I wanted to keep the back high, so I left it straight across with the shoulders.

Because I used a shirt with wide shoulders, I did not have to add any technical “sleeves.”  This saved me a lot of time from having to create, cut, and sew sleeves along with the rest of the dress.

Here’s what both of my pattern pieces looked like side-by-side.

The Sewing:

1. Sew pattern pieces together by placing the right sides facing each other, and sewing side seams from just under the sleeve opening, to the bottom of the front piece.
 
2. Hem the bottom of the dress all the way around–a bit lenghty because of the train.
 
3. Hem sleeves, and neckline.
 
4. Add belt, and voila!
 
This girl made this dress in under 2 hours!  Tutorial on her blog.
Black formal dress tutorial
Easy black formal dress with train.  Took her less than 2 hours to make.
Easy tutorial on how to make this fantastic dress in less than 2 hours.
 
 
 
 

The necklace below is from Tiny Dazzles and right now they are offering 20% off everything in the store with promo code camden20.  They also offer free shipping on orders of $50 or more.  The necklace I’m wearing is only $13.60 with the promo code.

Details:
Dress: Made from yardsale fabric, less than $1.25 because I didn’t use all the fabric.
Belt:
Necklace: c/o Tiny Dazzles
Shoes: Old, similar here
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