Sunday, May 12, 2013

Birthday Dress

Why Hello everyone!
I'm haing such a weird few days. I got really badly sunburned on Friday and I feel like shit, or more like friend chicken, if you will. I've never bee burned this badly (and I did put on spf!) I'm even having trouble sleeping because leaning on my back or having any part of my body touch  another part of it is like being hugged by lava. Which meant I had to sleep like this:


Only I definitly wasn't as cute.

Anyway, thought I'd share with you a garment that I'm incredibly proud of even though I really don't think it's my greatest achievement or even a very good fit. Incidentally, it's the same color of my skin at the moment.


MY BIRTHDAY DRESS!

I've been craving to sew with lace for a while now and I love underlining (that's weird, right?) and so I thought this is the perfect project for me. I had made a lace shirt (I will show it to you guys soon!) before so I knew in wasn't very difficult to sew with lace. The thing is, I didn't take a few crucial points points into account and that made the process of making this dress quite long.
For one, I wanted to buy cheap lace (in retrospect, I have no idea why I was being so stingy, I guess I was afraid I would mess this up and didn't want to ruin perfectly good lace) and the only lace I could find was stretch lace. I didn't want this dress to be a stretchy dress though so I decided to underline it with regular poly satin. BIG MISTAKE ( I really don't know what I was thinking!).


I ended up having to hand baste all the pieces together rather than machine baste them, because the lace kept stretching out and by the time I finished the row of stitching I'd be stuck with tons of lace and no satin. This added like two hours of work, especially the half circle skirt which was SO much work.


I drafted the dress myself, as usual. There really isn't anything interesting about the pattern, there are side darts (dior darts?) and bust darts and the skirt is a half circle skirt. I underlined the whole dress and lined the bodice with the same poly satin fabric. I don't line many of my garments and I have to say - I'm sold! It just upgrades the whole garment! It does take longer to sew, but if you consider that making facings or finishing the openings with bias tape takes time as well, it may be worth it!

What do you guys think about lining your garments?



The skirt isn't as twirly as I'd like, I wanted to make a full circle skirt but I somehow miscalculated the amount of fabric I needed to buy and only had enough for a half circle skirt.

My original inspiration for the dress was this number worn by Michelle Williams. Can you blame me?


Then I saw Lauren's dress:


How could I now want to make a lace dress after that??

I made a satin belt from the same fabric as the underlining, using this tutorial (again inspired by Lauren) but I ended up not wearing it to my party because it kept slipping and sliding. So this is what I ended up looking like:

 
I kind of like it this way too! Though I definitely look less like a present. I wore it with a leather jacket part of time because it was kind of chilly out, I like the way the girlyness of the dress clashed with the masculinity of the jacket.

The fit isn't perfect, I don't know if you can tell but the neckline is definitly gaping and the straps are too large. I noticed these fitting issues only after I constructed the whole bodice and lined it, which made it basically impossible to make any changed without killing myself
.
 Anyway that's it!
FYI I know I was supposed to upload my MeMadeMay week but I lost my camera cable so I'll only be able to upload it won Tuesday.

What do you think? Do you guys line your garments? Have you ever sewed with lace?


Happy Sunday!

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