Time to pay the piper

For all the piping on this dress.

Did I ever mention I love piping? I don't even mind installing it anymore, though I used to hate it. My regular zipper foot isn't a big help, but the adjustable zipper foot Kenneth King recommended when I took his Piped Pocket and Buttonholes class on Patternreview does the trick.

This is yet another version of BWOF 2/09 #113, the dress I wrote about recently. This is my fourth version of this dress, and while I could keep going, I think I'll give it a rest for a while and think about other things.

Besides, I'm out of piping. I bought 5 yards of this at Pacific Trims some time last year, with every intention of knocking off a perfectly adorable Tracy Reese dress. That may still happen, but I'll have to restock first.

This may be my favorite version of this dress so far. I went upstairs to Mario's office to get him to zip me all the way up, and he who never really has a comment on what I make said that he really liked this one too. "The lines are good on you." I don't know if he means the lines of the dress, or the lines of the piping, or what - and I decided not to ask. Sometimes getting into in-depth conversations with a non-sewing man who just wants to give a you a compliment defeats the whole purpose.

I'm pretty pleased with this dress. I used up my entire 5 yards of piping, which is kind of annoying because I would have liked to pipe the skirt's side seams and around the armholes, but then again, the armhole piping would have probably just ended up with deodorant on it anyway, which would have been really annoying. I should just shut up and be glad that it all came out evenly, including across the back at the zipper where I had issues last time I did a piped version of this dress.

The fabric has been in stash for a week, which may not be a speed record for me, but it's definitely approaching one. It was $2.99 per yard at Karlin's, the local store who recently kicked up their stock and lured me back in after several years of lackluster thread-and-zipper buying. The owner says it feels very Lily Pulitzer to him. Not so sure about that, but it's bright and summery and - at $2.99 per yard - the whole dress cost me about $5, including zipper.

This is absolutely getting worn to work tomorrow, first of all because it deserves a test drive and secondly because it's the perfect dress to wear with my new shoes I got on Saturday.