Earlier this year I set about choosing a nice dress for the Aurealis Awards. After trying on everything my wardrobe I thought I had a hope of fitting into, and hadn’t worn to the awards before, I listed my options:

– go to a big shopping centre to buy a new dress
– buy a dress online
– buy a second hand dress from a local op shop and refashion it
– make a caftan dress out of fabulous material (seriously!)
– buy a pattern and fabric and make a dress

Not being a huge fan of shopping or sewing, I tried the refashioning option first. At one of the local op shops I found a skirt with interesting fabric of glittery circles underneath a gauze overskirt. I thought I might make it into an infinity dress, that favourite of bridesmaids.

The skirt:

The fabric underneath:

The infinity dress is very simple: a skirt with two long straps attached at the front. The straps wind around the upper body in one of many (infinite?) arrangements, so exact fit isn’t an issue – which was particularly appealing when having to allow for unpredictable bloating and water retention.

But not having a lot of time for sewing, I went looking to see if I could buy one. I found an Australian Etsy seller making them (not the US one I linked to above) and ordered one, with about a month to spare. It arrived a few days before the Awards. Aside from it reeking of sweat and garlic (a quick wash fixed that, thank goodness!) it seemed perfect… in all ways but one.

The straps were way too short. I could get them over my shoulders, down my back, crossed at the front… but the ends wouldn’t then meet to tie at the back.

So I wound up at a big shopping centre, where I found a perfectly lovely dress to wear.

What do to with the infinity dress, then? I tried buying a length of the same fabric to tie around my waist and let the ends hang to get the right look. I wound up buying some red too, just in case the black didn’t quite match. But no matter how carefully I tied them I always had I had two bulky knots at the waist.

By then I had completely fallen out of love with this dress idea. With so many of the strap arrangements you can’t wear a bra, and some that look like they have good coverage in photos, don’t – in particular the side boob coverage. I found only one arrangement that I liked, that would work with a strapless bra that I bought for the purpose, but I still needed longer straps on the dress to do it and the extra length of fabric didn’t fix that problem attractively.

I’ve got two options now: either cut the straps off and make it a skirt, or see if I can sew the straps together to make an attractive dress. I’ll probably try the second option first, and it if doesn’t work go for the first.

I let the seller know that the straps were too short – not demanding a refund and not mentioning that it reeked when it arrived – but got no reply. Still, I knew buying clothes on the internet was always going to be risky so while I’m disappointed with the dress, it was no more expensive than a new skirt would have cost anyway.