The FABRIC!

So Tim and I took a trip down to NYC to buy fabric from Mood :-)  So we ended up with a silver color fabric for the under layer!  Here's a picture of it.  It's a cotton sateen fabric.  Satin (as it's called when it's made from silk) is simply a way of weaving.  It creates a slightly shiny side, and a duller side.  The "correct" side of the fabric is the shiny side. It's called Sateen when created with cotton. This is a nice light fabric that should breathe nicely for Gina.

This is a picture of the lace - just the lace by itself (right).  It's a french lace, ivory colored with a slight shimmer to it.  The lace is the most expensive fabric in the dress.  Gina decided that she loved the look of the lace over the fabric so much (left photo), that it is going to cover the entire dress!  So just imagine all three of those layers, the under layer the silver, and then overlaid with the lace.  Beautiful!  

This fabric to the left is simply tool - it's the fabric that tutu's are made out of.  This fabric is very cheap, and is going to be used under various parts of the dress to make it poofy and stick out a bit.

This last photo is the lace, the silver under layer, and the lighter silver fabric is for the lining of the dress.  It is also a cotton, but just a regular cotton, not a sateen.  I'm super excited to get started with the real fabric!  I'm waiting until after Christmas though because I want the layers to be correct before I cut all the pieces out.  It is best for me to cut all the pieces at the same time, because then I can cut the big pieces out first, and place the smaller pieces in the spaces between the larger ones.  This uses the fabric most effectively, causing the least amount of waste.  :-D

Fitting - Full Dress Take 2

 So for this fitting EVERYONE came :-).  Gina, Linda, Kelly and Jaclyn!  The dress came out great - although I had spent all day finishing the dress before the fitting (my planning ahead could have used some work this time), and my sewing machine quit about 5 minutes and one seam prior to people getting there.  I think it overheated, and decided it was done.  Since then, it has reawakened, and is just fine - but apparently I can't sew that much in one day.  I built the sash into this dress - but it's too low.  If you notice though, the front of the skirt has fullness now, but in the correct locations. :-D

 In the photo to the left, you can see there's a little more fabric to be taken out to fit it to Gina's butt.

And this is the dress bustled.  One thing that I made sure to do this time through making the dress was to cut each "type" of fabric in one go so that I could understand how much fabric we would need to buy to build the actual dress.  So we decided that it was time to buy fabric!  One thing that was bothering me though was the length of the dress, it's about 2-3 inches too long even with Gina's shoes on her.  Because of the layering, it means that I need to re-adjust the layers.  However, at the time, I decided it was going to be fine, and ignored the issue.  HOWEVER, knowing me, it began to bother me, and now over Xmas, I'm going to put it on her again, and find out exactly how much it's long by so that I can correct the pattern before cutting it out of the real fabric.

And for those of you who have asked - YES - this is just a practice dress.  The only piece of this dress that will be a part of the real dress is the bra cups sewn in the bodice.  YES this is a lot of work for practice - but it has been an evolution of the idea, and of the pattern.  I needed to be confident that when I cut out of the real fabric that it was going to be correct, and I wasn't going to mess up the expensive fabric.

Correcting the Pattern

So - as I said previously - the shape to the front of the layers on the skirt was incorrect.  This is because I tried to take a shortcut - and guesstimate the shape that it should be.  This meant that I ended up with fullness in the wrong locations, and not enough in the right locations.  Let me show you what I mean.

This is the shape I originally started with.  The right hand side is where I cut on the fold. (Cutting on the fold means I had the fabric doubled over under the pattern, with the fold along that edge.  Generally I cut with the fabric folded over (not every piece uses the fold) because it allows me to cut two pieces at once).  As you can see, the shape is odd, with extra fullness off to the left.  The left seam is the side seam (as I said, this issue was just on the front of the dress, the back was correct).

In order to correct this - I start with the shape of the skirt underneath.  That is the shape to the right here. It is simply copied off the skirt pattern.  It is similar to the shape that I will want eventually for the layers - but the layers need more fullness, for they are going to be somewhat poofy.

Take a look at the shape to the left.  This is the correct way to add even fullness to the skirt.  I've taken the shape above, and cut it from the bottom into even pieces.  The top is where it attaches to the skirt, so  I don't want to add any fullness there. (Although if you were adding shirring or pleats there you would need to).  Then you spread apart the bottom, and tape them apart until you get the amount of fullness that you are looking for.  Then you trace this shape on a new pattern piece, and you are all set!  

The other corrections to the pattern are fairly simple.  Taking a bit of fabric out to change the fit is simply a matter of marking the dress while it's on Gina, and then transferring those marks to the pattern, and then creating a new pattern piece.  Once all these corrections were made, I rebuilt the dress again, for a new fitting with Gina!

Fitting - the first time as the full dress

So I've been properly scolded again by Mom - as I have not updated in a while.  My apologies - things got busy - then the car got totalled (Tim was rearended - yes he's fine, and we now have another car...), then there was Thanksgiving!  So I will give the whole story through I promise.

SO - when I last was here, I had just finished the full dress for Gina's fitting!  I was a bit concerned with the amount of fabric on the front sides of the layers on the skirt - but I needed to see Gina in the dress.

Seeing Gina in the dress - I realized that yes - there was too much fabric on the side of the layers - and that the shape of the layer was slightly wrong.  I needed to rethink that shape.  The rear part of the skirt came out exactly how I wanted it to - but the front still needed some work.  Gina decided that she wanted the top of the skirt to come up about two inches as well - so I would need to accommodate that as well.  I wanted the shape of the layers to flow nicely from the front to the back - and this was not currently occurring.

 You can see the line on the dress - to the right - showing where Gina wanted the skirt to be - I also had a bit of fabric to take out to create the fit she wanted around her butt.  This is a great picture of the layering in the back - and how it turned out.

Gina had been talking about adding a sash to the dress - so I mocked up something so that she could take a look - this is a picture with that on as an option.

This is an idea as to what the dress would look like with a french bustle - it looks a little awkward in this photo - but with the skirt brought up the two inches, it should look great.  As you can see - the bustle pretty much causes the second layer to disappear in the back of the dress.

Next - I'll explain how I had to rethink the shape of the layers - and then on to the next fitting!