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Draped 1950's inspired dress
The three pictures above are the final garment that is, a 1950's inspired strapless dress with a sweetheart neckline and a circle skirt. I love the 1950's style as I like how the dresses look and the fullness of the circle skirts,
This is the picture of my initial design, it has a sweetheart neckline and a full skirt. (At the time, my knowledge of dressmaking was limited so I didn't know what type of skirt was the best choice to do as the only skirt I had made up to this point was a pencil skirt.)
This is the drape of a basic bodice, after I did the basic bodice drape I chalked in my style lines, this included how high to start the sweetheart neckline, how low to make the V in the centre, also how to style the back.
After marking the style lines on the drape, I then took the pattern off the dress form and took a photo of the pattern laid out to get an idea on how much fabric I would need for the bodice, I then traced the pattern off, adding seam allowance, removing the side bust dart by moving it to the top bust thus hiding it into the dart at the top of the bust as that was going to be a seam anyway.
When cutting out the toile of the pattern to do a test fit to see if it fitted, I encountered some issues with the bust being pointed (It was common to reference Madonna with this situation.) To amend this, I ended up easing this in at the nape of the bust (The same way that you would ease a sleeve into the arm hole, by sewing two lines of basting at the point that needs easing in and bunch it up so it looks like a Constantia effect), instead of going back to the pattern to redraw it, this saved time and allowed me to practice a common technique for a different scenario.
Unfortunately due to a technical issue, i do not have evidence of the trials showing elements of the construction, below is a test piece I did with some scrap fabric I had at home during the pandemic despite this.
This was the finished toile, the previous picture had more than one garments worth of pieces on it as I intended to have a fully lined dress and bodice, but it turned out that this wasn't necessary as the calico was thicker than the chosen fabric and lining put together. The toile pictured was before I figured out how to resolve the issue with the bust.
This was in the final garment, you can see how the seam allowance is wrinkling up where I eased the fabric in.
These are close-ups of the bodice internal structure, the hem of the skirt which was 0.5cm seam allowance in addition the seam allowance of the bodice which was 1cm, I interfaced the bodice to give it some structure but didn't interface or line the skirt. When looking back on I would have interfaced them both to give the skirt more volume and structure.
these are photos of the final garment before I inserted the invisible zipper and sewn in the lining for the bodice.
These depict the finished bodice and skirt seams, the zipper and lining, due to not having access to a sewing machine when sewing the lining to the waist of the skirt, I hand sewn it. This was done by folding it in 1cm and whip stitching it in place, making sure the stitch caught only the seam allowance for the skirt and not the outer fabric. This was a good technique as I didn't end up with a stitch line to the outer fabric and gave it some ease to move when putting the garment on.
This is the dress lay on a table with the skirt section splayed out and the zipper open
I ended up backing the facing for the zipper to keep it nice and stiff, I stitched the two pieces together with pad stitches.
Waistcoat
This is the waistcoat that I took inspiration from for a design with a zipper in it instead of the usual button closure as i wanted to modernise the look of a waistcoat. I intended on inserting pockets, similar to this on my design, although inspired by this design above I made the decision not to add pockets because the brocade design on the back added enough impact visually.
This is an amendment to the pattern that I did to the top of the armhole at the back as it gaped too much so I placed a dart and amended it on the pattern.
As I hadn't seen a pattern for a waistcoat before and never made one, I was confused as to why I had an inch of extra fabric at the bottom of the back, I originally thought that this was an error in the pattern, In researching this I couldn't find anything at the time and ended up cutting it flush to the side seam. But looking back at this now, This may have meant to fold up an inch and sew that so you had an inch of the shell fabric showing inside, I'm still unsure.
These are examples of the toile that I did for the waistcoat after amending the armhole and the back hem (The waistcoat was not part of my college work but something I did in my own time during lockdown, i ended up using some old jeans and leftover crepe backed satin and satin brocade I had from a failed project, as prefer to use scrap material and upcycle waste fabric in order to support the effort too reduce my carbon footprint and to contribute to the environment, in addition I still wear the waistcoat to this day 2 years on.
This was an example of backing the lining fabric to give it more structure, I ended up not using this technique but it came in handy as a learning curve as I learnt that I can use this in other projects that contain crepe backed satin to give it structure.
This is a photo of the back and front all stitched together before I sewn the shoulders closed.
When sewing the zipper in I basted the zipper in, as I didn't want to top stitch the whole of the centre front as this would mean top stitching the neck line and the hem which I didn't want the look of. (I'm still unsure whether this was the right way to go as the hem defiantly needed top stitching in my opinion)
This is a photo of the lining and the top stitching on the lining to the facing.
These are pictures of the finished garment that I completed, as I mentioned earlier I think the hem needed top stitching but I'm unsure, it might have just needed pressing.
Draping a full gown
This was a drape that I am currently working on in my spare time. This is intended to be made out of the cerise crepe backed satin that I used as my waistcoat lining and plan on using a stiff backing for the bodice instead of iron on interfacing to give it structure. This is a technical challenge to me as previous garments were a basic bodice and a pencil skirt.