Floral empire waist dress with hand-picked zipper

I made this with rayon I purchased at Jo-Ann's - I've been dying for the perfect floral dress and I thought that this would be it.



I didn't plan out where I would cut the fabric, and so the bodice oddly has almost no red in it, which I was concerned about at first, but once the whole thing was together the skirt made up for it.



It took me almost 10 years to figure out, but the best way to sew in a non-invisible zipper is by hand. It's called "hand picking" for some reason and it really does give you the most amount of control, and honestly in the end takes about as much time as machine sewing. It does a nice job of looking handmade without looking "homemade." Does that make any sense?



Unfortunately I'm not crazy about the way it looks on me, so I'm going to put it in my Etsy shop in the next week or so along with a bunch of other stuff. Time to reopen!