A Difficult Dinner Dress - Part 1
I am making a dress to wear to Gwri's work dinner on Friday (as I write this it is Monday, in case you read this some other time). It is based on a drawing of a dinner dress from 1908, in a book that I got from the library but I've forgotten what it's called. I don't think I shall show you the picture until the end, ha ha ha.
I have so far spent nearly 20 hours on the pattern and mockup, including 1 hour writing out instructions for myself to follow so I put it together right, but not counting probably nearly as many hours again just thinking about how to pattern it and put it together, but that thinking time is normally done whilst doing something else, like lieing in bed hoping to go to sleep sometime soon (putting dresses together in your head isn't conducive to going to sleep, but otherwise I get bored).
Here's a random picture of part of the mockup. (The dress itself will have 2 sleeves.) I didn't take any other pictures of the process.
The pattern has 18 different pieces, and will involve 6 different fabrics, although it probably could have done with 4 if I had the right fabrics and enough of each.
The main fabric I really wanted to use only had 2metres on the roll when I went to buy it, which wasn't enough for the oringal design which involved the skirt being bias cut (cut diagonally rather than stright - uses more fabric but hangs differently) so I changed that, and also had to make the skirt less full than I would have liked. But then when I came to cut it out, there wasn't enough even for the pattern I had, so I had to take a bit off the skirt.
Here's the lining, which will hopefully fit me better than it fits the mannequin.... It looks more-or-less like it fits her here, but the bodice is way too long for her in the back, and the bust is a bit funny. It opens at the back. Hopefully these pictures do something sensible.
So far, on the making side rather than the design side, I've spent 5 hours - 2hours 40minutes cutting the pieces, but I still have 4 pieces to cut, 1 hour interfacing parts, and 1hour 20minutes actually sewing.
I have so far spent nearly 20 hours on the pattern and mockup, including 1 hour writing out instructions for myself to follow so I put it together right, but not counting probably nearly as many hours again just thinking about how to pattern it and put it together, but that thinking time is normally done whilst doing something else, like lieing in bed hoping to go to sleep sometime soon (putting dresses together in your head isn't conducive to going to sleep, but otherwise I get bored).
Here's a random picture of part of the mockup. (The dress itself will have 2 sleeves.) I didn't take any other pictures of the process.
The pattern has 18 different pieces, and will involve 6 different fabrics, although it probably could have done with 4 if I had the right fabrics and enough of each.
The main fabric I really wanted to use only had 2metres on the roll when I went to buy it, which wasn't enough for the oringal design which involved the skirt being bias cut (cut diagonally rather than stright - uses more fabric but hangs differently) so I changed that, and also had to make the skirt less full than I would have liked. But then when I came to cut it out, there wasn't enough even for the pattern I had, so I had to take a bit off the skirt.
Here's the lining, which will hopefully fit me better than it fits the mannequin.... It looks more-or-less like it fits her here, but the bodice is way too long for her in the back, and the bust is a bit funny. It opens at the back. Hopefully these pictures do something sensible.
So far, on the making side rather than the design side, I've spent 5 hours - 2hours 40minutes cutting the pieces, but I still have 4 pieces to cut, 1 hour interfacing parts, and 1hour 20minutes actually sewing.
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