In for an update on my costume!
Firstly, my dalmatian coat is 99% finished. I just need to sew the buckles on and a waist stay in. I also forgot the first rule of sewing circle skirts/bias garments - hang them for several days before hemming. I hemmed straight away, my outer fabric and lining dropped in different spots (I may have cut the lining on the wrong grain to the outer) and now the lining is hanging lower than the outer fabric in spots
I am not going to stress over it, I will only have it on for a few minutes at the start of the night, and really just wanted to make it as a backup in case the red dress doesn't work out. (And it does indeed look as if it will work out... does it indeed!)
I'm also super disappointed that my fabric paint chose that specific spot in the very front of the dress to drip, I had it sitting over a clothes horse to dry and didn't realise that the centre front was hanging over the edge. It couldn't have been the centre back?? I am sure nobody will notice.... but I know it's there
That half of the costume finished I set about The Red Dress.
I ended up buying a pattern off etsy that was basically exactly right for the foundation of the dress, minus the collar and piece covering the decolletage.
I mocked that up in cotton drill which is what I had on hand, but I realised that it's also the perfect weight for the foundation layer. So once I got the fit right, I cut 4 layers - white cotton drill for the foundation (to sewing the boning, bra cups and underwires into), red silk tafetta as my fashion fabric, cotton poplin to underline the silk for more body, and red silk habotai for the lining. Luckily I had all but the silk tafetta in my stash already.
After the disaster of the "silk" I got from ebay, I found a seller on etsy that had tafetta on sale. He told me it was 80% Silk, 20% polyester, so I took a chance on it and it arrived ahead of schedule, and is a beautiful fabric. Holds a lovely crease (I have to laugh when I say that... when would you ever want it to crease!) essential to get the folds looking good, I don't think poly would ever have worked.
The toile;
After putting together my foundation layer complete with all the boning, and putting together the red silk fashion layer, I tried the mockup on one more time and decided I wasn't happy with the fit of the bust at all. It rather flattened me out. So I ripped the bra cups out and tried using the cups from a merry widow pattern I had, which turned out to be a complete waste of 5 hours! When that looked terrible I ripped them out and sewed the originals back in place with a tweak to the seam, darted the top of the cups and decided it was the best I was going to get without completely starting from scratch which was just not an option. I ended up gathering the top of the bra cups in my red silk fabric to get them to look ok over the foundation, which doesn't look too bad but not really the look I was after. But most of it will be covered in the draped layer anyway so I'll probably just make sure both bra cups are covered.
I used the collar and bodice pieces from a different pattern to create a collar and mesh base to drape the silk onto to recreate the look from the movie. Also, the mesh helps to stop any -ahem- back-fat from spilling over the top of the dress
One of the last things I did on Easter Monday was to cut and sew the silk mermaid skirt. Trying to conserve fabric, and having narrow silk, I ended up piecing the circle skirt with a seam that most modern sewists would be horrified by - on the sides of the circle. However it's really common in historical gowns to just have random seams in the skirts where they are needed to be economical with their cutting, so I thought it was a genius solution to the problem of a limited amount of fabric (I only purchased 6 metres due to the cost). I cut the edge of the circle skirt using pinking sheers = no hem allowance needed and no sewing a ginormous circle skirt hem.
I then proceeded to sew the right side of the skirt to the wrong side of the dress. Sigh. Halfway through unpicking I decided to just rip (it works for cotton, right?) well I ripped a hole in the silk. Sigh. So when I re-sewed it, I had to bring it up a little and it's sitting higher in front. Hopefully I will be able to cover that with the draping over the top.
Thus I am now at the point of draping the top fabric, which will be tomorrow's job. I just have to figure out how I'm supposed to hand stitch all the folds and things, to the dress underneath, without inadvertently sewing it to my dummy :thinking:
Also with all the cutting of the draped fabric that will have to happen, I'm not quite sure how to stop the raw edges fraying. I think I'll be figuring it out as I go!
30 Replies
12617 Views