Bohemian Mod Dress

I finished this dress yesterday afternoon. I was a bit daunted by the prospect of having to do the all-in-one facing, but that turned out to be the easy part. The hard part was the invisible zipper because my invisible zipper foot is worn out, especially when sewing on the left side. I had to use the seam ripper several times to get that right. It's a plastic zipper foot that has gotten a bit warped with time, so I'll need to get a new one. After I learned how to sew in invisible zippers, I never use the regular kind anymore. Since redraping the dress and making some slight alterations, it fits me perfectly. It will be great to wear once the warmer weather hits.

Spring Thing

I finally got around to sewing this dress project today. I kept putting it off because I thought it would take too much time. In actuality, it only took about three hours to sew up the bodice lining, as well as the bodice and skirt. Right after I took this photo, I gathered and sewed on the skirt. I plan on doing an all-in-one facing using this Burda tutorial. I had tried doing something similar for my final draping project, but didn't exactly figure it out. In a lesson learned from that final project, I also added some lightweight interfacing to the contrasting waist sections, so they get less wrinkled. I'll try to sew the facing tomorrow and insert the invisible zipper.

Dress Drape #2

I had time to sew up another muslin of the dress that I redraped several weeks ago. This version has a better fit with the changes that I made, including moving the shoulder seams back and adding darts to the back of the bodice. I think I like this full gathered skirt more too. It just seems more summery to me. Hopefully, I'll be able to sew it up in my fashion fabric later this week.

Dressed Form

Here's a dress that I draped this weekend. Originally, I had sketched out more of a shift style dress that had a small amount of gathering under the empire waist. However, when I draped that and sewed up my muslin, it didn't look quite right. So, during my second round of draping, I ended up adding a gathered skirt all around. I wanted this to be a retro-styled day dress and I think the gathered skirt is reminiscent of that. I plan to use these fabrics that I bought a while back for the final dress, but I need to sew another muslin first to check for fit.

Draped Dress is Done!

Last night, I finished my dress! It turned out much better than I thought it would. It's a little wrinkly in the photos, but I'll iron it again before class. It also looks a bit loose because I draped it using the dress form at school, which is a size 8, and slightly bigger than my dress form at home.

I had finished all the machine sewing yesterday afternoon, but had to hand sew the bodice lining edges. All during class, I had been sewing samples in muslin, so it was nice to work with a fashion fabric. I was experimenting with the addition of that piping on the top of the waist midriff and I really like how that detail turned out. I should have added it to the bottom of the waist too, but I just plain spaced it. Oh well, I suppose I can add it later if I want.

Draping a Dress

My final project for draping class is a dress with a fitted bodice and gathered skirt. I'm using this great Alexander Henry fabric called Pavo with some brown Kona cotton. Here's the pattern for the bodice that I've drafted after draping it on the dress form. I'm using the patterned fabric for the majority of the dress with the brown cotton providing some contrast at the waist midriff.