Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska

        Below is a photo of Fascinating Woman Karen who is wearing a *perfect* example of a Fascinating Womanhood cotton housedress!  The photo alone clearly shows the Fascinating Womanhood traits of Femininity and the Domestic Goddess.  Click the photo to see a larger version of it, if you’d like. 

        A Fascinating Woman is feminine in appearance.  It’s impossible not to notice how feminine Karen’s dress is!  In addition, she is wearing a feminine necklace and earrings and has cared for her beautiful naturally curly hair.  She is trim.  She looks so nice, so beautiful – so feminine!  She is truly modest – her clothing is attractive and non-offensive to all tastes.

        A Fascinating Woman is also a Domestic Goddess.  In addition to maintaining a clean, orderly, organized home, she has excellent domestic skills, such as being very skilled at sewing.  She is also frugal.  Karen has these aspects of being a Domestic Goddess covered!

       Karen wrote the following about her real work of art dress and how she feel’s in it:

“The dress has a little bit of a story to it. I found the vintage pattern at a thrift store a couple of years ago but never used it until I started this dress a couple of weeks ago. You can see what it looks like here: http://vintagepatterns.wikia.com/wiki/Simplicity_5968 (I made the shorter version.)

“The fabric is probably considered a quilting cotton, since the woman who gave it to me is a quilter. The pattern envelope said that I would need 3.5 yards of material to make the dress, and the piece of fabric was maybe 2.25 to 2.5 yards. Since I had encountered this situation before with a different dress, I decided to try a creative cutting layout to see if I could make it work. By shortening the sleeves, which I had planned to do anyway, I got all the dress pieces cut out.

“Other than making it short-sleeved, I made three modifications to the design of the dress. I made the collar narrower, since I do not really care for the extremely wide collars of the ’70s. I think my dress’ collar is about half the width of the pattern piece.

“I also added ties to the back waistline darts for an adjustable fit. As is the case with patterns printed before the 1980s, this one had only one size, and it is a couple of sizes larger than I normally make for myself. Rather than sizing it down, I made it in the larger size so that it can be used for a maternity dress for at least part of a pregnancy (if and when that happens) and also to accommodate a bust-line that is increased due to breastfeeding. That brings me to the other modification.

“Because my son nurses regularly, I made this dress nursing-friendly. The bodice lifts up at the empire waistline, and the under-bodice has slits in it. (I cut the under-bodice from a piece of plain blue fabric; there was not enough of the printed fabric for that.) It works quite well: I wore the dress to our church’s Pentecost service and had no difficulty in feeding my son.

“This was a very low-cost project. The pattern cost a quarter at the thrift store. The fabric was given to me. The zipper was in a collection of zippers that my mom gave to me years ago. The hooks and eyes were my grandmother’s. I already had thread from other sewing projects. (I used five different colors of thread in this dress, because I did not have enough of any of them to do the whole garment. I just made sure that the topstitching and other visible stitching was the light blue thread that matched the fabric.) I did buy some interfacing and have enough of that left over to use in other projects.

“I feel very cute when I wear this dress, and my husband likes it, too. It is light and fun and makes me feel like skipping (which I did at one point while I was wearing it). I am quite pleased with how it turned out.”

        Thank you so much, Karen for allowing your photo and words to be shared here! You’re femininity, skill, and beauty are inspiring!

        If you are working to achieve the Fascinating Womanhood lifestyle and feel that you are lacking in the areas of femininity (including being trim) and Domestic Goddess skills, you’ve got time to learn to achieve success in these areas.  You are a homemaker who is in control of her own time – make the time to become the total Fascinating Woman by making it your priority (unless you have something pressing like a child who is battling a serious illness at the time).  Become the woman you want to be!  Don’t feel like you could never learn to sew or be as feminine and trim as Karen because you can, you really can.  You can learn to sew, to look feminine, and can lose weight – here at Fascinating Womanhood ~ Alaska, we learn these things together and support each other along the way.  Many of us are at different points along the path to becoming the total Fascinating Woman, but we’re all journeying together, supporting each other, learning from and with each other, and loving each other as only women can.  You’re in the right place, feel free to join the journey with us into the wonderful, utterly fascinating world of Fascinating Womanhood!