After all, I grew up in America's Dairyland

There's a common practice within the design industry called doing a "rub off." Essentially, when you find something you love, you have it copied exactly by pinning muslin over the original garment to duplicate the pattern, shape, and fit. It's not an exact science, but it usually gets you really close within a much shorter time than starting from scratch might.


A couple of weeks ago I found a dress I just love at a boutique near our apartment. It's a vintage dress, obviously well loved and quite worn in, and the boutique owner altered it a bit before selling it. It fits beautifully and is extremely comfortable, plus I can dress it up (to a certain extent) or down depending on my needs.

So I made a rub off. It wasn't difficult, but I've found that the first draft of a rub off nearly always requires modification and tweaking. I didn't have time to mess with modifications--this had to be a fast project--so I rubbed off directly onto the fabric I wanted to use and stitched it together as quickly as I could. I'm quite pleased with the results, but I would love to have time to make it again so I could alter the fit slightly.


I really like the two prints together: I found them both at Purl one day while I was teaching. I've mentioned before how I really don't like to use prints that are intended to match: for example, prints from a single collection. These prints are just cheeky enough together; they clearly aren't intended to sit together, but the varied scales, color intensities, and vintage feel of them both make them perfect together (in my eye, anyway).

I keep getting compliments on the dress, and the other day a stranger told me it was very "Anthropologie" (which I thought was amusing, since I wondered how she know it wasn't from the store?). So I guess it works. Although something about the paneled skirt feels a bit Milk Maid to me.

It's the East Village. I guess Milk Maid can sit with goth, grunge, hipster, or anything else that I might find out there, right?