{blogtober day 25} frocktober facts & fails

Did you know 1 in 87 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer by the time they are 85? Did you know 70% of those 1:87 will not be diagnosed until they are stage four? Did you know the five year survival rate of ovarian cancer is just 45%? And did you know, all these scary stats lead to ovarian cancer receiving just 0.7% of medical research funding?

These facts were all answers in round one of last night’s Frocktober trivia night. I saw the event pop up, and thought I should organise a team, and promptly forgot, until a message arrived in my inbox. “Hey Rach, want to help make a table for trivia?”. Absolutely I did. If there’s one thing I’m half decent at, it’s remembering obscure and random facts; some so obscure that people will side eye me and ask “where the heck did you learn that” and I often don’t have an answer. I might need my Todoist app to remind me the first Wednesday of the month is oven cleaning day, and my phone calendar AND written calendar to remind me I need to go to the dentist Monday, but that random tweet I read in 2008 with a fun fact unconnected to any of my established interest areas? Yeah, I can recall that instantaneously.

Add in the fact that it was a chance to dress up in cute dresses, get out of the house, and catch up with folks I haven’t seen in forever, and it was a recipe for a great night. The lead up, however? Less great.

The story of my frock fail starts the day after the original message. I had to pop into the op shop, to meet a friend to organise some stuff for soup kitchen. She was a little tied up, so I started browsing, and what should I find, but 3 metres of taffeta for $4. Right next to it? A sparkly table runner, also $4. For $8, I could totally justify a new dress fro frocktober, couldn’t I?

Except I didn’t have cash on me, so I left them there. I’ll come back, I thought, it’s kind of a niche product, it will be fine. Except then life got in the way and it was three weeks before I got back, and we got to roadblock number one.

The taffeta was gone.

I pivoted and grabbed a grey sheet instead, but it definitely put a dampener on my plans. I left both sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks, trying to decide if I really wanted to go ahead with it, or if I just re-donate them back to the op shop (complete with tags still, they wouldn’t even need to reprice!) and wear the dress I made a couple of years back for a friends wedding.

On Tuesday, we confirmed we had a table and were going ahead with the night out – hooray! Could I get a dress done in time? After two weeks of procrastinating, of course starting with 60 hours to go was a reasonable proposition. If there’s one thing I thrive on, it’s a last minute deadline. I was going to give it a red hot crack, so I headed to Pinterest and got to searching. Narrowing it down to a couple of options, I went with the free one, and hit download, then print, in rapid succession. Which revealed roadblock two.

The pattern was in Russian.

And it had no instructions.

Never fear, thought I, it is but a simple v-neck, a-line dress. How hard could it be? The original blog post where I found it was in English, and I could work out enough to find the sizing options. I googled Euro sizing conversion charts and found myself in the depths of roadblock three.

The smallest size was the equivalent to an Aussie 18

Friends, I am an Aussie 6/8. A 10 if the size runs small and I’ve had a big brekkie.

But that’s ok, I thought. Excess fabric just gives me space to work with. Especially since I didn’t realise until I cut it out, that it didn’t include seam allowance. (Minor road block, but hey let’s add it to the list). I cut the fabric, and the overlay. Overlay basted, and then it was time to pleat and attach to the skirt…except (road block four), the pleats per the pattern didn’t really seem to match the pleats in the diagram. I fiddled a bit and in the end just shoved the weird pokey bit that didn’t fit, below the seam allowance and figured I’d deal with it later. Baste bodice to skirt, and then baste the shoulders and side seams.

It’s coming together nicely, thought I, and quickly too. Famous. Last. Words.

With the basic garment together, I decided it was time to try it on. I slipped it on, and through various levels of acrobatics, managed to pin the back of the dress closed at the waist, and at the collar. Zero blood drawn, which for me is a mammoth achievement worthy of whatever the crafty version of a Nobel prize is. The waist fitted perfectly; in a normal dress, I would be cheering. In a dress that was supposed to be five sizes too big? The alarm bells were starting to ring. The shoulder were too wide, the bust seam sat too high, the arm holes cut too tight. I fidgeted and fiddled trying to get it to sit right as I pretended this wasn’t roadblock number five. Butterfly was called into action to see if she could help pin up the middle of the back so I had an accurate idea of where I needed to adjust. I’m pretty sure by this point you can see roadblock six coming in hot…

It didn’t do up.

By a solid inch, the back was too small. Off came the dress, and I started to do some rough measurements. The bodice, it turns out, is six full centimetres shorter than what I need it to be. The back needed extra fabric. I threw it in a pile in the middle of the loungeroom, and flounced out the door to soup kitchen, while the dress had a good hard look at itself and thought about what it had done.

In the end, I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to salvage it. I had a lovely dress already hanging in my cupboard that would more than suffice. Over the last few years, I’ve learned to discern when it is worth pushing through on a project, and when it is a wiser choice to let the project go. I curled my hair, grabbed some makeup (note to self: buy new lippy), and popped on the dress. I think, if anything, it actually fits better now than when I first wore it. Possibly it needed a slip to smooth out a couple of undergarment lines, but overall, I am still as happy with the dress as when I first made it. My sparkly sandals were pulled out from their various hiding places and the next problem arose.

They were still marked with the mud from the 2021 wedding.

Because of course they were. I gave them a quick scrub, and called it close enough. I pretended I couldn’t see the inner sole lining coming off as I strapped them on, assured the teenager I could indeed balance on their stiletto heel, and took myself off to town ready for a night of fun and facts. It was only half hour or so into the night when I was swinging my foot under the table and thought something didn’t feel right, that I realised one of the toe straps had come unstuck (problem number eight, for those following at home). A relic from a wedding where I served as bridesmaid in 2014, for the last decade they have been my go to sparkly fancy-pants sandal. It is a little sad to be saying goodbye to them, but I think they’ve well and truly served their time and are overdue for replacement.

It was a brilliant night, roadblocks not withstanding; catching up with old friends, meeting new friends, and fabulous conversation. We even managed to come equal sixth out of eighteen tables, and most of all – we raised some much needed funds for ovarian cancer.

Know the signs, and know your body. Don’t be shy about getting something checked if it’s almost-normal-but-also-really-not. Get your Pap smears, check your boobs. Cancer is a bitch and until we get a cure, early detection is best.

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