And I look too good to be wearing this.....

I want to introduce you to a friend of ours. His name is Mr. Saleem and he is our tailor here.  We love Mr. Saleem because he makes clothing that we love for about 1/3 of the price that we could buy it.  I had a few dresses made, a skirt and a shirt for my vacation to the States.  If you bring him a picture or something you already have, he can make it so well.  You can even draw him a picture and he'll do it.

So when I was in Lebanon, I found this great store that I loved but every dress was over $200.  I wanted 3 dresses in there.  I took the catalog from the store home with me.  2 weeks ago I went and bough the fabric at our favorite 3-story fabric shop.   You can either show them the picture and they will direct you towards the best fabric or you can search around the store on your own until you find something that you like.  Last week, I brought my handy dandy catalog with me, showed them the dresses and they directed me to the basement where I found the lightweight cotton I needed along with a jersey stretch fabric that was necessary. 

Then I was off to Mr. Saleem with my catalog and new fabric.  I'm always a bit nervous to see how it actually turns out.  One of the dresses needed a crooked pleat across the front but he did it well.  When we have our initial talk about what I want made there are a lot of words flying around like "same-same" (this means that you want it exactly the same) and this last time he kept saying to me "self-same" (he used this word to mean the fabric should all be one color).  Sometimes I get nervous about all the same-same and self-same stuff......I am wondering if the product will come out in any way the SAME-SAME as I have in my head.  Was that the correct usage of the word?!

Then I couldn't find the exact ribbon I needed for around the waist, but he took 2 ribbons and made his own rendition which turned out okay in my mind. Not my favorite, but okay.

Didn't he do well with the ruffles? 

 We've become professionals at changing in the car since he doesn't have a changing room.  He used to --well, that is debatable as it was barely big enough for me to remove a dress over my head without hitting my arms on the ceiling, but it was still a place to change.  It's a good thing we have tinted windows here on the car:)

This is dress #2.  You can't tell but it's a jersey knit at the top with a crooked pleat along the front. It's a cute dress but the ribbon isn't exactly how I wanted it to be. That's not his fault, it just doesn't exist here.  At home it would be super easy to find, but then again we wouldn't be living in the Middle East if EVERYTHING was EASY to find.

Anyway, tonight, I decided to bring my dresses home for the final try-on and I loved them.  My favorite is the navy dress with ruffles.  He did those with flat fabric. It's amazing.  He did such a great job.  Dress number 2 is fine also and if I wear a sweater over it and a scarf around the neck I think I will like it more. 

So, each dress turned out to be roughly $40-$50 for the fabric and the tailor.  Not so bad from $200+ to that.  I'd say I won on this one.  1 point for Jessie.