Finished a dress last week! I may not have anything to wear right now, but I'll be set when spring rolls around.
From a 40's pattern, early 40's if I had to guess from the style. It is a sort of ball/fancy gown, meant to be made in a satin, but the self-destructive forces inside of me just didn't want to do something so easy, with fabric that didn't stretch, that didn't require a lining that wasn't in the pattern, or a totally different construction method than the directions. And patterns are meant to be easier. But I was just staring at the fabric and thinking, 'it is just asking to be made into a little sun dress or something.....so I obviously can't do that.' Voila. A little insight into my thought process. Purposefully difficult and contrary.
Short: The dress. The fabric is a sheer, textured fabric. Very soft, light green underneath. The middle diamond has lace instead of lining. There is a front slit (which I'm not usually a fan of, but it works with the style) and the dress has a train in the back, which is AWESOME. I'll probably just end up stepping on it :P
I almost forgot, one weird thing....the dresses closes with SNAPS on the side. SNAPS. Such a pain in the ass to sew on (I got a lot of episodes of Secret Diary of a Call Girl watched). I guess it works though, especially with this fabric, as a zipper probably would have been too stiff and looked really weird. In fact....I may do this on more dresses.
Details: The fabric is seriously gorgeous, as is the lining (which is probably as sheer as the top- I like to think that makes it opaque, lol). The lining is a wonderful fabric in its own right, the drape and movement is fabulous, I wish I had more of it to make a dress on its own. All in all very flowy. In the middle diamond section I left out the lining and put lace under the top fabric. You can barely tell, but I know it is there :)
And to make things more difficult, I thought that using a serger for the seams would look funny; the fabric wouldn't fall right and it would be sort of noticeable. Whatever the reasoning, I didn't use the serger at all on this project. French seams. All of them. Twice as much work, but it looks so much better than a serger would have. Another little thing that only I would notice :)
I made the waist quite a bit smaller than the rest of the measurements, (I don't know why I don't do that on all the patterns I use, I have a smallish waist, better to take that into account when cutting than bringing in the side seams at the end) and while it could have been taken in a little more, it really helped. Also nice was that there was no back of th e dress to worry about being too big. Of course, no back=hard to wear. In the pictures I'm wearing some old bridal backless corset thing I had from highschool when I wore a backless dress to a formal. It isn't terribly comfortable (and at the risk of sounding like a tramp, it hits my belly button ring when I sit down, eep), but it'll give me really good posture, lol (tight!). And some comfort knowing I won't have to worry about it showing in the back.
Yea....so that is it. Hope you skipped over the boring stuff. I just go on and on because no one would actually want to listen to me about sewing in real life :P
So: back view, view of train (I'm holding it out with my foot, it doesn't actually fall like that normally), weird hair, etc
~Nikki
Getting me a remote for my camera was a terrible idea, I take so many pictures. Not that I like taking pictures of myself, but it just takes SO many to get some to turn out, lol. I'm so not photogenic. I'd like to make clothes for someone else so I could use them as a model and take the photos myself.
