I did it Mom!!!!

Target Dress

I have 2 distinct memories of shopping with my mom for clothes as a child.
1) She always wanted to buy me clothes that were "my color". She determined I was an "autumn" which meant I looked good in golden yellows, greens, browns, you know fall type colors. To this day I stay away from anything black because she used to tell me that black did NOT look good on me. (I buy every other color though- sorry mom)

2) Many times I would hold an item of clothing up to show her and she would say something like, "$20!!! We can make that for a lot cheaper than that." I found that especially irritating as a child because I wasn't particularly interested in sewing and didn't want to invest the time or energy in imitating something.
Well fast forward several years. Now I am the mother shopping for my daughter. I don't allow myself to buy Julia any dresses because she has a TON that i make for her. I don't care about buying things in her "color". But Mom won on the sewing thing. She successfully indoctrinated me with it. Every time I pull something out at the store I always think, hmmmmm I could make that for a lot cheaper. But then I put the item back and forget about it. Well a few weeks ago I was shopping at Target and ran across a darling dress for Julia. I knew I couldn't break the no dress buying rule but I really wanted the dress. There was also no way I was going to plunk down $10 for it. Too cheap for that. So I devised a plan. I bought the dress. I took it home. I studied out the style. I laid it out on newspaper and traced it. I took this pattern and made a knock off. I did it. I sewed something without using a store bought pattern. I don't have good spatial-visual skills so this was a very scary project for me. Figuring out how to sew it was the easy part. Creating the pattern was the more difficult part. If only I would have taken some pattern drafting classes in college.

And then I took the dress back to Target and got my 10 bucks back. (did I commit design theft?) Thanks for inspiring me Target.

My version-(sorry it's a little wrinkled)