ALWAYS have a back up outfit

  Today is Homecoming at my older children's HS.  Tonight is the dance.  This year the theme is The Great Gatsby.  Now to me, that is a novel first, a film second and third, but not a theme, per se.  However, the idea of a 20's era dress was very appealing to my daughter, so to the store we went for red satin and seed beads.  Oh, yes, this was not going to simply be a dropped waist with a hip sash - Heaven forbid!  We decided on beading the front of the dress.
     Sometimes, even though you know how overly scheduled your days are, and how many responsibilities you have, you just have to say, "Okay,  I know this will kill me, but let's try."  So I cut the fabric, and was ready to sew when I realized the beading would have to happen BEFORE sewing.  Armed with an audio book and a clear (ish) dining room table, I copied the rose patterns onto the front of the dress and began.

   We decided on a black outline, then steel beads for defining the rose petals, as well as short  iridescent bugle beads for accents with gold  seed beads for the roses themselves.  Yeah, right.

The lower pair - not mirror images, as I had to freehand part of the design  when, after the first  use, our transfer paper failed

After about 6 hours of work, I was not even half way done.  My daughter helped when she could, but two people on one dress front gets tight.  We had a good time, however, listening to music, talking, and video chatting with her boyfriend. (My first experience with Skype.) Last night at 3 a.m. I had to sleep for a bit because I was not longer seeing straight.
    5:30 dawned grey and dim, and I looked at my husband and told him he was going to have to get our son to his 6:30 team bus for the meet, as I did not have any brain cells awake. By 7 a.m. I was up and beading.  By ten we decided that the gold seed beads looked fabulous, but were taking longer to apply than we had, so we would make the second pair of  rose images the reverse - bugle beads with gold  leaf/highlight areas.

The section we did not get finished.  

        At about 2p.m., my daughter and I realized her dance was at 8 not 7, so she called her boyfriend to see if he could move their reservation back an hour.  The dinner reservation was for 5:30. He was not inclined to do this, and reticent about why, making me think he had other things planned that just dinner, so I did not push it. Finally at 4:15 p.m. I told my daughter, to stop beading I was going to stitch the darn dress up, she might be able to get away with wearing it if part of a rose was not beaded, but not if the garment was in pieces.   So I stitched like the wind, and realized that I would need an extra 20 minutes just for the pressing.  So, with great disappointment and yes, a frustrated tear, I sent her to grab two dresses from my closet that I thought would work.  She tried on a blue one with a black sheer overdress - not drop waist, but sheath style.  After pulling the shoulders up an inch, adding a rhinestone choker, chandelier  style earrings, and a beaded evening wrap, she was ready to go.  Was it what we planned?  No.  Did it work? Well enough. Did she look pretty?  I'd say, yes.