My Newest Vintage Dress Acquisition

My neighbor sent me a text message at 10:30pm asking me if I wanted to go to an estate sale with her in the morning.

Since I was particularly dreading my work for the day, I jumped at the chance (that's a major benefit of working from home).

A little background: my neighbor is a serious estate-sale goer. She's the person who shows up at midnight the night before opening day to be the first person to sign the list. Seriously.

I am completely new to estate sales. Who knew you actually had to sign up to attend?

My neighbor was number one on the list. Her mom was number two. And I was number three!

We arrived at 8:50am and waited for the rent-a-cop to open the door. I have to admit I was a little nervous. I'm not a competitive shopper. I never go out on Black Friday (is that what it's called?). In fact, I hope to be done with my Christmas shopping in November this year. I don't like elbowing or being elbowed.

My neighbor told me we had to split up. She said it didn't make any sense to go in the same rooms together. We had to divide and conquer. Eek!

She assigned me to the bedroom. Luckily, it was a small house and she quickly found ourselves in the same room together. She barked at me (nicely, of course) to grab dresses left and right. There was no time to look at them or even size them up. We had to grab them and stuff them into our bags. We were both looking for dresses for my Retro Prom birthday party.

I ended up with four dresses in my hand, $20 each. My $70 allowance per month didn't exactly allow for such a big splurge.

Although none of them were Retro Prom material, they were beautiful sun dresses. My neighbor and I stood off to the side and looked more closely at the dresses. A vintage shop owner was on the prowl, encouraging us to let her know if we were going to give up any of the dresses.

My neighbor encouraged me to try them on. Oi vey. Vintage dresses are SMALL! Even with the zipper fully open, I had a hard time getting the waist over my breasts. It doesn't leave much hope for actually zipping the damn thing.

I eliminated two of the dresses and decided that I could maybe spend $40 to get the remaining two.

As we stood in line, though, I challenged myself to bring it down to one dress. One new dress is enough for one day. I ended up putting back my favorite dress, probably because it was the tighter of the two.

I thought the other one fit better--until I got it home. I thought it would fit better without all my clothes on underneath.

Um, no.

Well, it's a see-through sheath (without any other layers underneath it), so I'm going to have to make it big enough to fit on my body with another layer underneath.

It looks like there's a little extra fabric around the zipper. Maybe I can reclaim some of that.

Plus there are some darts in the back that aren't completely necessary.

Crossing my fingers...

Maybe I should start searching for maternity vintage clothes so I have a chance of fitting into them without major alteration?

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