Since my earliest childhood, black has played an integral role in my wardrobe identity–or so I’m told. My mom tells me she used to always want to put me into pastels, and I’d gravitate instead to deep, dark, or bright colors–even the dreaded black. Mom tells the story now as a testimony to the “Color Me Beautiful” seasonality approach to colors. I’m a winter, there’s no doubt about it–and even as a child, I knew what I looked best in.
Black is the base color in my wardrobe. I own no less than 6 black dresses, 1 black suit, and 5 pairs each of black slacks and black skirts. And that’s not counting the outfits in which black plays a role but is not the primary color.
So it’s not as though I need another black dress–another black anything, for that matter.
But I couldn’t resist the lure of the black dress that has been sitting at the bottom of my mending basket since my grandma passed it down to me years ago (maybe 6 or 10 years back?)
It was a simple dress, a mid-calf a-line style with short sleeves. It fit me well enough, except for the sleeves, which constrained my movement too much. I’d torn the sleeve off the last time I tried the dress on, and the dress had been in my mending basket since. I planned to take off both sleeves and simply finish off the armholes for a sleeveless dress.
Meanwhile, I acquired black dresses by droves, including a mid-calf a-line style dress with short sleeves, which made the dress in my mending basket superfluous.
But it fit so well, and I liked the style, and it used to belong to my (now-deceased) grandma. My frugal and romantic and black-dress-loving nature rebelled against giving the dress up.
So I tried it on and developed a plan. I removed the other sleeve and finished both armholes with black bias tape (left over from a quilting project). I finished the neckline with the same tape for continuity. I chopped off the bottom half of the skirt and hemmed the rest to just above the knee. I bought some white rick-rack and sewed it along either side of the center seam.
My dilemma solved, I tried on my new-from-old black dress. Absolutely retro-mod. I love it!