Devotion

♫ ♪ Kele - Devotion

Wedding photo from the ‘80s.. My father, Nena, Pietro and my mom.. I’m the one in the red dress, crying :) Sorry or putting here a photo of a photo.. When I return home I’ll replace it with scanned one..

Here is a special project, that I’ve managed to make before my unplanned  trip to Italy.. Many years ago, my aunt found a man of her dreams, and since he’s Italian, they married in Italy.. For their wedding, my mom made me a cute little red dress.. At that point, I was the only one of the “kids”.. Being the first, I was the center of my aunt's attention, so you can just imagine how tough for me was her decision to go and live in Italy (when I was a bit older, I saw all the advantages of having an aunt and cousins abroad)..  For some reason I didn’t want to be in the wedding photos.. I was just sitting on a fountain, crying, minding my own business, while the bride and groom were posing with guests.. You can see a little girl in a red dress in almost all of the wedding photos (like in the one I’m showing you)..

Back to the little red dress.. Although my mom made it for the wedding, I wore it a lot for special occasions as a kid (as seen here).. After some time I have outgrown the dress and my younger sister Dina continued wearing it.. The dress had a few transformations over the years.. First, it had some white applique on the front, then my mom added dots with gold sparkly fabric color, if there were any other phase, I don’t remember them.. Once I wore this dress as a costume for a Little Red Riding Hood.. It’s a miracle that the dress made of cotton chiffon survived all this time.. We kept it with some of the other clothes we had as kids, that are still special to us.. 

Recreating the pattern of this dress and adapting it for a grown-up woman was easy.. The idea of making it was on my mind for a long time.. When I saw the navy polyester chiffon with red polka dots and flowers I knew that it was closest to the red cotton chiffon I would ever get (once again remnant bin find).. It was a good compromise because I rarely wear red.. The dress has all the elements I love – baby doll shape, ruffle sleeves, and even more ruffles at the bottom of the skirt.. I made a lining for all the parts of the dress, except the back of the bodice and the sleeves..  I used french seams while sewing the dress.. Neckline I finished with the bias tape.. I made the dress a bit loose, to avoid inserting the zipper.. Everything turned out great.. The dress was ready for a photo-shoot on the same place where my aunt and uncle did their wedding photos with guests.. 

There are two more special details.. First, the shoes.. For more than two decades, shoes my mom wore on the wedding also survived! This way I had something authentic for the photo-shoot of the dress I made.. Second, this was so not planned, but it turned out that the wedding anniversary was at the time of my visit, on 5^th of September.. Last week the weather was terrible.. Cold and rainy days.. I was kind of hoping that the weather will be nice and warm so we could take photos on the day of the anniversary, and it was! 

Thanks to my dear cousins Marko and Lorenzo for having patients while taking the photos.. And big thanks to Pietro and Nena for making my visit to Pescara better than I could ever imagine!! 

Lorenzo, Marko and I