The REAL reason I never rushed a sorority.

Let's forget for a minute that my college alma mater (Berry College, woot woot!) did not have Greek life on campus. I have discovered the real reason why I never rushed a sorority.

For some crazy backward reason, sororities require you to MAKE a dress to wear at some point during rush week. You would think in this enlightened age that Jcrew.com or even the bridesmaid section of David's Bridal would be the preference when needing to dress 100 girls alike... but no. As it turns out, McCalls 5904C is the preferred method of maintaining sisterhood you can see from a mile away.

My sister called me in a panic on Sunday night. "I'm screwed!" she wailed into the phone. When I asked why, she told me about how she had to make this dress for rush week...which starts on Aug 1. The conversation went like this:

Me: "Well, do you have the pattern?"
Sis: "Yeah."
Me: "Do you have materials?"
Sis: "Yeah."
Me: "Do you know how to sew?"
Sis: "No."
Me: "Then yeah, you are screwed."

But like any good sister, I majorly overstated my sewing abilities and told her that if she would show up to my house, we'd get the dress made. So, Monday night after work she arrived with 6 yards of couch cushion, er I mean funky and fun, looking fabric and all the materials, including the illustrious pattern. We spent about 2.5 hours just reading the pattern.

Did you know that in McCalls' language, you wear a dress like 3 sizes bigger than what you buy in the store? We seriously think that the people down at McCalls need to go try on some stuff and see how outdated their sizing is. It's not bad enough that Sister had to wear this hideous dress in front of people... but knowing it was technically made in a size 8 instead of her regular size 4 was almost too much to bear. But I digress...

And so commenced a 10 hour journey into Sorority Dressmaking 101. I photo documented it for old times sake. Sister and I actually had a pretty fun time (it was sew fun, a notion we had never fitted for ourselves, ha ha get it...) and Rory was decently behaved throughout the process. We did resort to letting her put Aunt Lars down for a fake nap at one point after drawing Elmos got her a little too excited and she did a dance on the pattern.

Here we are, absolutely terrified to make the first cut into the fabric:


Nearly midnight, we've made it to step 7 out of 48 on the pattern...


After discussing at breakfast how we both had nightmares about dressmaking, we got started again and by 10 am there was something resembling the top of the dress starting to take shape:


Finally, a mere 10 hours later, an unhemmed yet incredibly still in one piece dress remained:



We agreed that the fabric reminded us of a couch cushion and the pattern was probably chosen by the 1 person in the sorority that would look good in this particular cut, but other than that, it seemed to turn out decent. There were some parts in the pattern I straight up did not understand, so we made it up as we went. A few little alterations needed to be done (like added gathers on the boobie triangles) and the zipper had to be sewn a second time in efforts to keep the back from gaping open. But honestly, I am amazed and relieved that I did it! I also felt very challenged and inspired to try more clothing in the future... perhaps for my two girls. Visions of matching sundresses are dancing in my head...