Self Drafted Dressy McDress

Heya.

The radio silence is over. I've been busy in the studio, working on some goodies, burning myself with steam and having no idea what day it is. But I am happy to present the first of the many things I'm working on. I have to apologize for the quality of the pictures. I had to take them while the dress was on a hanger. It didn't fit right on the dress form and in the end the dress form broke(a leg just broke off, damn it)

Here's the concept of the dress. The pencil lines mark the lengthwise grain direction. As you can see, I'm not exactly talented when it comes to drawing, but it gets the point across.  The dress is made of viscose and polyester blend with a touch of elastane, it's kind of heavy and a bit thick but it was very easy to work with and the best part is that it doesn't wrinkle much, so it's super easy to take care of.
The triangles in the bottom add a bit of flare to the skirt part and they are cut in the crosswise grain direction so the shade of it looks a bit different. I had to add that seam in the back that runs from side to side due to the characteristics of the figure. The back was a bit hunched in the shoulder area and it messed up the whole balance of the back area. Basically it lifted the dress and it started to point towards the front, but when I removed a strip in the waist(but only in the back), it rebalanced the whole garment.

The whole collar
in the front, I like.

See, how the little triangle
thingies look a bit different?

 Seems like I have completely forgotten how to fit the whole length of the dress into one picture. Silly me. Oh well.  The hanger does not make the dress look flattering at all. Unfortunately I am too shy to ask the customer if I can take a picture of the garment while they are wearing it. Especially if it's an 80 year old woman. I was nervous enough when she was picking it up and trying it on for the last time. With older people, the body changes a lot and there are a lot of fit issues to be concerned about, so I was sweating bullets. Anywho. I even used shoulder pads for this dress and I almost never use them for anything that's not a blazer or a coat.

Laceicious collar. 

Back of the collar. Yum!

 I struggled a lot when it came to cutting out the collar. The fabric was just regular fabric and the selvage had that nice finishing that is now at the edge of the collar. And the design that the customer and I decided together was that the edge of the collar should be with the nice finish but should follow the V shape of the neckline. So I couldn't make it as a square(though I reallyreally wanted to). For the front part I gathered the lace in the neckline(but so subtly that it wouldn't pucker) and made a seam in the middle. And for shoulders I added darts into the shoulder, I didn't use the dart from the pattern, I just played around until I got the result I was happy with. In the end the dart in the collar was even bigger than in the shoulder of the dress. Go figure, eh?

Closeup of the bottom

Closeup of the sleeve hem.

I overlocked all the edges and finished the sleeves with double topstitch and the bottom of the dress with invisible stitch(by hand). There was no lining for the dress as 1) for dresses like this I don't usually use lining and 2) the customer didn't want a lining.

Pattern: Self drafted
Time spent: around 20 hours
Fabric: A blend of viscose, polyester and elastane.

I think the big moral of this post is to fix my dress form asap and focus while taking pictures. Sucky post. :(

***
Fooniks
***