River Song Day of the Moon Dress- The Good Enough Version

A while ago, 2013 to be exact, I wanted to make River Song’s Day of the Moon dress for the Phoenix Comicon. I found a tutorial on how to make a dress from scratch here at the RPF forum and after studying it, I realized it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish it or make it for the convention, but I still worked on it and finished it last year.

At that time I had a sewing machine wasn’t working well. Although I was able to finish this dress in-spite of the sewing machine, the dress wasn’t made well. The seams aren’t straight, the stitches are uneven, and for whatever reason the thread was frayed or weakened in parts. I don’t remember a lot from that time about the machine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if how this dress turned out was the main reason why I got a new sewing machine.

Anyway, I never took photos of how the dress turned until now.

This is what the front looks like…

The back…

And the side…

The dress was made out of army/olive green suiting from Joann’s and a zipper in the bodice. I didn’t add the pocket zippers because I couldn’t figure out how to add the zippers to this dress. I already know how to make the welt pockets required for the dress, but I made parts of the dress strangely (and inaccurately to the screen accurate dress) so I didn’t want to add them until I was certain what was going on with the construction.

This version of the dress is what I call the “good enough” version. It’s not accurate to the AllSaints dress used in the episode and there is so much wrong with it I keep fixing it. Due to the bad seams the sewing machine used, seams rip all the time and I have to constantly hand sew everything back together. The zipper I used in the bodice of the dress was sewn on poorly so I’m always worried the zipper seams will catch on something and break. When I wear the dress, I wear a shirt or dress under the dress because the dress can fall apart so easily and I don’t want anything to show if a seam rips.

Still, I wear it. And I love it. The skirt is full and fun to walk around in. I never thought Army green would look good on my skin but it does. Its really baggy (Another reason why the dress isn’t a good Day of the Moon dress) but its great on days when I don’t feel so good and don’t want to wear tight clothing.

Although I love it, and loved it so much I wore it to the Arizona Renaissance Festival, I realized its come time the dress should be retired and I should make a better built, more accurate one. I’m unsure if I’ll take this dress apart and recycle parts of the dress in the new version, but I do know I’ll need more green suiting for the skirt of the second dress. The skirt in this dress is full, but the way I made it annoys me and is hard to repair so I’d like to remake it. Right now I’m waiting for the suiting at Joann’s to go on sale for more than 30% off. 🙂

Well, I think that’s all for now! I hope I covered everything in this post. It’s been so long since I finished this dress that I’ve forgotten a lot of the little details in making this dress! If I get the time, and fabric, to finish this dress, I might make a more detailed post about that dress. 🙂