Stripes and denim, just like the fashion bloggers do

Hi again, this is Helena from GrayAllDay.com and I had the best time making this overall dress – I skipped over my usual hesitation and just went for it! No fear!

I’ve seen many cute overall dresses, and many fashion bloggers wear them with striped tops. The one I chose to use to copy is Keiko Lynn, a favorite blogger of mine because of her colorful and fun ensembles. This is a very toned down outfit for her, so I thought it was one I could actually copy and wear in my less than high-glamour lifestyle! She has some killer accessories in her shot (as she always does) but I didn’t have access to either a similar hat or thigh high socks. I paired my outfit with gold earrings and my beloved gold Birkenstocks.

As seen in my previous post about this top, I hacked this from the Seamwork Astoria top by simply adding a chiffon peplum to change the shape and wear with my lower rise jeans and skirts. It has proven to be a fun top to wear and I’ve had so many compliments on it already. I don’t usually wear a ton of stripes, but I’ve found they go really well with many other items, even other prints. But, even better, it goes great with this overall dress!

This was another hack – I used the Grainline Moss mini skirt to make this and drafted the bib and waistband myself. I’m so glad I could do that, since I knew the fit on the Moss was perfect, I could focus on the many other details of this dress without worrying about fit. Doesn’t it fit perfectly? It feels great on, too.

The medium weight denim I used has quite a bit of stretch, and denim is so easy to work with! Just a few placed where I had to pound some really thick seams that met – but that was fun to do! I also got to hammer on the buttons for the buckles, so all aggression I had for the day was expressed joyfully with my hammer!

This post is a bit last minute because of zipper woes. I didn’t interface for the zipper because I thought the denim certainly had plenty of weight to hold a zipper. But I forgot that exposed zippers are put in much like welt pockets, and will fray badly in some fabric, like – haha- denim. I had to unpick my zipper, interface, then redo carefully without unravelling the 2 corners! This is an example of where a set of instructions would have helped, but I was full speed ahead! The Grainline instructions are wonderful and I’ve used them for several Moss skirts, but I moved the zipper and made it exposed, so I was improvising that part.

My favorite details I added – back waistband and facing (added to the yoke) pulled tight to create a great fit across the small of the back, the strap holder under the top overall strap to keep them crossed in the correct place, and the size and shape of the bib turned out really well, and I drafted that pattern piece myself.

I had to stand back and marvel at that topstitching. It is beautiful! I did that with my new BERNINA 350 PE I have on loan while I’m a BERNINA ambassador. It purrs and smooths over all those layers of denim like buttah. Such a pleasure to use!

I think I captured the casual and fun style of the inspiration image and came out the other side with 2 great unique garments I’ll be wearing all summer!