fixing the minnie mouse dress

So I found this dress at the Alameda Flea back when it was all warm and sunny. What was that? yesterday? Anyway now it's cold and raining and while I like rain I also like to keep some summery warm weather inpirational stuff around. So I figured, even though it's not gonna be warm enough to wear this dress for a loooooooong time I thought it would be nice to fix it up so that it is warm enough to wear it, it will be ready to be worn.

So while this dress was an awesome find (like if Minnie Mouse went to a sock hop) and it had pockets and appeared to be handmade, all the smocking was worn out in the back. So that was the first step, make it so it wouldn't fall down.

I decided instead of tackling smocking right now, I would go the easy route and got a roll of two inch wide elastic and fit that into the back of the dress over the now defunct smocking.

It involved an alarming amount of pins and some scrunching of my face in concentration and I tugged the two sides so that it would be straight. However it worked so it was worth the strain.
After that was complete I figured I may as well deal with the buttons as well. There was one missing and they were white and sort of small. And I thought that it would be nice to make them, I don't know, blend more with the dress. And a white dress with big red polka dots, needs big red buttons of course!

And Voila! Some slight adjustments and I've made this bargain find wearable. Of course now the weather will not cooperate with my desires.But I'll be ready. When it warms up this ridiculously cartoon-y frock will be the first thing I reach for. To celebrate the sunshine.

And in honor of my love of polka dots here are some trees wrapped in polka dot paper. These were awesome in person, a whole avenue of them stretched out along the river in London.