La Latina Pin-Up Dress (Part I)

My friend C asked me to make her a couple of vintage style dresses to wear to work - think "sexy secretary".  I've been busy on the first dress this past week in between work, cleaning, socializing and procrastinating packing...  (We are moving to the coast in a few weeks - eek!).

I used Simplicity 2250 for the bodice, and am making a slim-fitting pencil skirt for the lower part of the dress.  I had some black polyester fabric kicking around in my stash with a red and white roses print on it - perfect for a sexy, retro feel.  Unfortunately I didn't have enough of it to make the wide straps that C requested so she could wear a normal bra with it, so I used a black cotton twill and then used scraps of the rose print to make piping on the outer edge of the straps.  I think it turned out beautifully!

C wanted the dress to be quite tight (especially in the skirt part) so I picked up some stretchy red ponti de roma knit fabric to bring out the red roses in the bodice.  As you can see from the photos, it's not a perfect match of reds, but it's the best I could do.  Hopefully she can wear a wide belt to help break it up a little bit...

The colours in this dress make me think of a sexy Latin pin-up from the 50's, or possibly ChaCha DiGregorio from Grease (she sure got a bad rap, didn't she?  lol) so I've sort of been calling it the La Latina...  I still need to finish this dress, complete the second dress for C, and pack up my house - all before April 15th.  Yikes!