Ivory and Lace

On to my next design. This dress has a princess seam bodice and a half circle skirt. The whole dress is overlayed with an ivory flower lace. The main fabric is a cotton and polyester blend, which has the benefit of not wrinkling and is the perfect weight for this design. I have lined the dress with a rayon bemberg lining that breathes beautifully and feel soft against the skin.

Let me know what you guys think. As always comments are very welcome!

On With The Satin Goddess

Finally I have had the time to make the pattern for the Satin Flower Dress! This dress will be one of the most complicated designs I have attempted yet. It has the scary strapless element that needs to somehow defy gravity! What I really do not want is a dress that you have to constantly keep pulling up - no-one wants to wear that! This means that the bodice needs to be very well constructed and fitted to make sure it stays in place.

How am I going to do this you may ask... well the answer is I haven't fully figured that out yet! Its a working progress. What I do know is that I will be using boning for the first time and I will be adding extra support at the bust so it can be worn without a bra. I haven't quite figured out how I am going to do that yet but I'm sure it will all work itself out in the end!

First things first - the pattern. That I can do! To draft the pattern I used the following book, which I do use for most of my pattern construction. Its a great book with excellent and clear instructions on a whole host of designs and garments. Perfect for teaching yourself pattern making - which is what I have used it for.

I made the pattern for a Strapless Princess Bodice which is essentially just adapted from the simple sloper with a few alterations for contouring. I actually forgot to take any pictures of me making the pattern (sorry!), but here is the finished article.

Front pieces for the princess seam. 

Yes I know this is upside down! For some reason every time I try to import into the blog it flips, hopefully you get the general idea. Its not a very exciting pattern piece anyway.

With my pattern finally done I was on a roll and decided to go ahead and test it out on some muslin. So here is it all cut out and ready to sew together.

Look at me being all productive! Next step is to sew this together and if all has gone to plan, which of course it very rarely does, the bodice should fit perfectly! If not stay tuned for some potentially very tricky fitting problems and see how I go about fixing them.

All comments and questions welcome!

Cut Out Shift Dress Progress Report

I have finally made some headway with the cut out shift dress! So here it is.


First I started to make the shift dress. After a few trial and error attempts I ended up making a basic pattern for a dartless shift dress. My first thoughts were to make it quite loose fitting but trying this out I found that this would distort the pictures of the Paris printed fabric so I decided on a tighter fit. In the end this dress will be very slimming as the triangles will bring in the waist and give you a great curvy shape. That's the plan anyway!

Here a few pictures of the basic shift. The fabric I used is black twill with a 20% stretch. This will add some comfort to the dress - I like to use fabric with a bit of stretch for tighter fitting designs.

Front

Back

As you have probably noticed my dress form is slightly wonky so sorry about that! I don't really know how that happened! Still works. I have sewn up all the seams except from the left hand side which is where I intend to put an invisible zipper. 

Now for the hard bit - adding the cut out triangles in the right place. For this part I just started experimenting with placement and size to see what I like the look of. I haven't quite finished this part yet and just took a few snap shots of my first attempt. Still got some work to do...

The dress will eventually have two cut out sections just as soon as I decide on where they will go. I can be quite indecisive so this may take some time!!

Let me know what you all think of the first attempt and where you would put the second cut out piece. Are you as indecisive as me? Any help or comments are very welcome!

1940's Dress Complete

After a lot of ups and downs I finally got the dress competed in time for the ball. I was literally hemming it a few hours before we had to leave! Nothing like stressing yourself out with massive time restraints! Here are a few photos of my husband Chris and I at the ball.

Standing in front of a WWII plane

Front of the dress

Another plane!

Back of the dress

V-neck!

Chris and I on a plane wing

Back of my hair

The WWII ball was so much fun, Chris and I had a blast. Got to do lots of swing dancing and saw lots of cool retro shows. It really did feel like we had stepped back in time - a magical night and I can't wait until next year already!

Have you been to anything similar? What did you think of the dress? Comment away!