One of my favorite candies as a child and even now are Mounds and Almond Joys. For those who aren't familiar with them they are basically just chocolate and coconut and the Almond Joys have almonds on top. I'll do a post on how to make these homemade sometime soon. So much better that way in my opinion. Anyway I digress, back to the outfit.
I decided to go with Almond Joys and the candy itself instead of the outside wrapper. After all the candy is the good part and you just throw away the wrapper. So this left me with a great color scheme. Brown for the chocolate, tan for the almonds, and cream for the coconut. Luckily I had all three colors on hand. However I had them all in very very limited amounts. The tan I had the most of with probably around 2/3rds of a yard, the brown I had around 1/2 yd., and the cream I had at most a fat quarter. So I had to be creative and wise with my fabric. I should mention I did use some left over plain white for my lining.
I made this dress up as I went along. The only design element I knew I wanted to use from the beginning was the asymmetric collar. I was inspired by the last couple from this pin. However I knew mine had to be different since I was not using knit fabric. Hence mine is only in the front so it doesn't interfere with the zipper in the back. Ember loves that side panel of ruffles. That was actually born of necessity though. When I cut my tan fabric I did not have enough of it so I used it to my advantage and just filled in the gap. All of the ruffles are cut on the bias so I wouldn't have to hem them all. That would have taken forever and I wanted this to be a combination between finished and rough around the edges. Like country chic. Just like the candy with it's smooth fitted chocolate wrapped around the soft but shredded coconut and the hard crunch of the almonds.
Below the collar is a bib that is ruffled on either side with buttons down the middle.
I did a add a small nod to the wrapper of the candy with my zipper. It is mostly hidden except for that pop of blue color for the pull. Since the wrapper encloses the candy I thought the zipper was the cutest and most logical place to do an almost hidden tribute to it.
While making this Ember begged me to add pockets. I don't normally put them on dresses and she really loved it when I added them to the popover dress. I wasn't planning to add one here either but once I got done with the other design elements I decided it needed something more. I think the ruffle on that pocket might be my favorite part.
The panel of ruffles presented a problem for hemming. So I decided to just let it flow with the disheveled part of the look. I put in to lines of stay stitches a the bottom to keep fraying somewhat under control.
Overall I'm really satisfied with how this dress came out. I can't wait to see the designs the other ladies came up with. I'm sure there are going to be some jaw-droppingly beautiful outfits for this challenge.
So what do you think? Did I pick a good candy inspiration? Did I do it justice? Does it make you think of my candy?
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