Exciting New Project For Me

I get to make one of my dream dresses well with some modifications of course. This will be another wedding dress inspired by Audrey Hepburn from the movie Funny Face and also the picture next to it.

Basically the lady I'm doing this for wants Audrey's skirt and the bodice of the yellow dress. Here is the sketch I came up with for her. There will be a pink petticoat underneath. The bodice will be attached at the natural waistline instead of like Audrey's. Let's face it not many women can pull off that! The sleeves will be below the elbows instead of how I did the sketch and yes she will be wearing the converse!

I'm going to start by making a mock gown out of muslin. I have already purchased it as you will see in the below pictures.

Well unfortunately today was a FAIL. See how gathered and pretty the first picture is then you look at the one on the dress from and it is way too big. Not enough gathering, a disaster! I'm out of muslin so I will pick this up again tomorrow and try again. I did manage to get better gathering by putting an elastic casing on the side seam. I only did the one side to test it and I think it is going to work out as soon as I get the neckline smaller without being to low cut. Tomorrow I'm also going to get enough fabric to actually make it with the lining because that is going to make a big difference on how it lays.

The skirt was easy enough. Just cut three pieces of about a yard each. One for the center and two backs. That is three yards of skirt gathered to a small waist! The length is 33" which maybe shortened. I hope not lengthened since it's been cut. If it is not full enough I can always add more to the skirt.

Springtime Gown Complete

The final dress!

Butterfly Kisses:

Wedding Day Blues Springtime Gown

Ok so maybe I'm feeling sorry for myself but losing my job really sucks and with my finance also not working I doubt if we will keep our September date. I'm caught up on my custom orders but when I went to pick up my dress I didn't feel the move to work on it quite yet. So I decided to try to cheer myself up and go to the fabric store. My goal was to go outside my box I tend to go for dark colors. I would find happy fun spring colors and make a remarkable gown.

I've been working on this for three days. The fabric Green Grass Satin, lining yellow baroque satin and the blue green butterflies. Can't get more springy than this.

The Fabric

Here is the dress kind of blah right now:

The lining front and back

I had to serge it way before needed as this fabric frays a bit but it is still a lot prettier than traditional lining. Obviously you will not see this part of the dress when it is finished. You won't even see it when you look into the dress. You could almost turn the dress inside out and have a yellow dress if I used a reversible zipper.

A little tip when working with boning. (that don't sound right) Do not follow "Use a zipper foot" instructions the easiest thing is to either make your own casing with bias tape or cut your pieces like I did and take out the boning. I serged the bottom of each piece then sewed it to the lining. It lays nice and flat and if you follow the stitch lines of the casing you will have no problem putting the boning in its case. Also the casing needs to be centered to the seams not lined up.

Butterflies

Alot of gathering and serging on the seams top and bottom. This is a bolt of fabric!

I have laid the pieces on my dress form. It needs something else. I got fabulous fabric choices but it still doesn't grab me. I have something in mind so stay tuned!

5-21-10 2:01 pm

Here is more pictures of my progress. I pinned the butterfly fabric to the lining and sewed it. The picture doesn't show it but it has also been hemmed. The lining and butterflies are ready to go!

Here is a sneek peek of the dress over the lining front and back views. Pretty Craptacular! Boring topline. Going to have to work on it.

Well something needed to be done with the bodice so I made three layers of tucks to give it some texture:

40's Style Linen Dress

This dress was made with an imported European cross dyed linen fabric. It was rather stiff but worked beautifully for this dress. The dress is fully lined. The fabric was too coarse not to.

Custom Green 50s style Tea Dress

This is actually the same dress as the cherry dress. But my client needed it to be more semi-formal. This shows how versatile the dress is.

I used stretch sateen. It is beautiful fabric. She wanted a kelly green with white contrast and white for the other side of the reversible bolero. I'm shipping it out today so and will be anxiously waiting to see if it all works out.

With the white side of bolero:

The green side of the bolero:

Plugging away at my orders

I shipped this little dress yesterday. It must be green season because my next dress is going to be green too. I think it turned out cute. Now the wait to see if she likes it and if it fits ok!
It is kelly green with black contrast. My photos really didn't capture the color well.

My latest custom order

Haven't had to a chance to work on my dress. I've been getting orders which is a great thing. This dress was sucking my will to live. Everything went wrong with it! The worst thing I did was hand sew the waistband to the liner! Talk about hours of work done the drain.

The finished dress was worth it because it is very stunning. Below are some pictures of it.

The rhinestone trim is fusible. Something new but I felt it was better just to sew it on. The fabric is called Liquid Slinky Ocean Blue. It is so beautiful. It is a stretch knit. Not the funiest to work with but the greatest thing about it is it is wrinkle free! No ironing! Here is a close up of the bodice and back view:

The dress was actually supposed to have a drape but the lady who bought it asked for me to shorten it. She's a tiny little thing 5'1". I hope it fits her and that she is happy with it. After all the hours I put into the dress I will be devasted if it does not work out!