The Cameo Lover Dress

This dress is so much fun. I wanted it for myself, but since I don’t have many occasions to appear in a hipster music video, I made it up for Guinevere instead. I can’t take much credit for the design of this dress. It was inspired by a dress worn by singer Kimbra in her Cameo Lover music video.

Guinevere’s version has a slightly longer and less-full skirt, but otherwise, I think I ended up with a pretty faithful reproduction of the original dress.

The fabric is a medium to heavy-weight cotton sateen with a bit of stretch. I know I bought it sometime this year, but I don’t remember from where I ordered it. The bodice is self-lined. Yes, that is multiple yards of yellow pom-pom trim offsetting all that pink. Why don’t I get to wear pom-pom trim? Oh, yeah, Pete is afraid I’ll end up like this.

I put a lapped zipper in it since I didn’t have any invisible zippers in the right shade of pink. 

The pattern is Butterick 4718. I made up size 5, but gave it some length on the skirt to use for growing room. The last sleeveless dress I made for Guinevere with a Butterick pattern had some gaping at the underarms, so I raised them about 1/2″ on this dress and it seems to help with modesty and fit.

The sleeve flounces are self-drafted. I measured the armscye from each end of where I wanted the flounce to hit and doubled that number for the length. I guessed at how wide would look good, then added seam/hem allowance to each side, After the rectangles were cut, I tapered to each end so they would be flounce-shaped.

The big question with anything I make for Guinevere is whether she likes it or not. She does like this one. It suits her, and she gets a lot of compliments on it. The first time she got to wear it, she liked it so much she was jumping up and down with excitement.