Dapper Day Black Widow – Avengers

Made for: Supposedly Dapper Day Spring 2020, instead, the Great Drought of 2020

Background: Chase and I had wanted to do a simple dapper day Black Widow and Cap look. Mine ended up not being as simple as I originally planned.

Journal Entries: Read more at my Dapper Day and Black Widow Disneybound

Patterns Used:
Butterick B6582

Chase and I had planned to do a simple Black Widow and Cap look for WDW Dapper Day Spring 2020. I was going to make him a simple Cap-inspired vest and I was going to do a really quick Black Widow dress for myself. Nothing too intense or major.

And, even though the actual sewing part of my Black Widow dress wasn’t bad… I made it way more complicated than it needed to be by second-guessing myself the entire way.

It started with the pattern. Originally, I had wanted to use this vintage pattern as the basis. A cute little 60s mod look, done in black and red. But i couldn’t bring myself to cut this uncut vintage pattern. I was going to attempt to trace it onto some newsprint, but while going through my patterns I was reminded that I had this pattern, which is not vintage but a repro – and that front dress in the black just looked SO Black Widow to me I changed my plans.

My goal shifted to a black dress with a big, red, graphic widow symbol places off center. I picked up 2 heavy-weight stretch fabrics at Joann – a yard of red and 2 of black. First thing I did was make the widow symbol – I decided to go with the “italicized” symbol from the Black Widow movies’ logo (which was supposed to be premiering the night I was supposed to be wearing this at Disney World…). I blew this symbol up in photoshop and printed it scaled up to the size I wanted. I taped the tiled printed pieces together, cut the shape out, and then used that as a pattern to cut my applique. I finished the edges of it and it was ready to be attached… to something.

I was still kinda stuck on a more “mod” 60s silhouette. Which I think it lends itself to the bold, graphic nature of this applique better than the more fitted, sultry look of the current Butterick pattern I was about to start working with. I have a dress in my closet that was close to that original 60s pattern I hadn’t wanted to cut – so I brought it upstairs, put it on my dressform, pinned the applique on, and mulled it over.

I just could not make up my mind. I took stock of my fabric – I had the 2 yards of black I’d bought, PLUS I still had some the exact same fabric leftover from Misato the year before. I decided I had enough to make both dresses if I needed to. So I went ahead with the easier project – the Butterick 6582.

It was a quick project, like I’d always planned it to be. I basically made it in a day. No major alternations to the pattern except I left the bows on the shoulder off. I had a red zipper in my stash so I used that for the back closure – I thought the added pop of red to the back was cute.

So now I had my more fitted Butterick dress, and I had the black “mod” dress out of my closet. And one applique. I turned to my instagram story for advice and recommendations.

And people gave me so many suggestions! I tried pinning the applique to both dresses in different ways, places, making it smaller, moving it up, moving it down. But none of that really helped in the end. It only gave me more options that I couldn’t decide between.

I was going to go ahead and make the more 60s “mod” style dress (using the dress from my closet as a rough pattern), but by that time it had become obvious that our May 2020 Disney trip was not going to happen. Since I had time, I decided to just put it all away and come back to it later with fresh eyes.

In August, I picked it up again. I made the executive decision to just use the dress I’d made, not making the mod dress, and just going with the applique placement I’d originally had in my head. I got the applique basted on, and then machine sewed it in place. Hemmed the skirt and called it done.

And then it hung in my closet until January 2021. One weekend while I had my hair curled, I threw it on for a quick video and some crappy self-timer photos – just so I could get some content so I could write-up this portfolio entry before I forgot everything about it!

Also I feel like it can double as a fancy Star Trek TNG dress if I put my comm badge on. Cute.

History: Finally got to wear it on our Spring trip 2021! The original friday night event this was meant for in 2020 didn’t happen this time, so I just wore it to dinner one night. Chase’s Cap vest also didn’t happen but maybe we can do that in the future.

                       

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