For my Christmas dress this year I have visions of a dreamy floral dress; tight bodiced but with a big big skirt… this is not a look I’ve worn very often, if at all so it’s quite possible I am going to look ridiculous in this! However whenever I see ladies wearing these big skirted bright floral numbers I think how lovely they look, really so feminine and pretty. I’m not sure if I can carry this off or not, I hope so but we’ll see…
I’ve had this pattern for a while but not yet used it; one of those buy-one-Vogue-pattern-and-get-three-free deals. I bought it because I was swayed by the nice illustrations on the front and thought, hey, a useful basic dress pattern, OK! And promptly put it away, never to see the light of day again…
I like the skirt but the bodice is very not me…
Just a bit too poofy and gathered and flouncy. Even just looking at this pattern piece I already know this volume of fabric in a bodice would be just too over the top for my figure, the words “deflated balloon” spring to mind… But I had a firm idea in mind of the kind of bodice I wanted for this dress; something with a bit of interest, some pleating but still quite fitted. So the following is what I came up with, inspired by a dress I had seen somewhere, not sure where now…
Burda 8071 has a very simple, streamlined, princess-seamed bodice that fits me perfectly, so I used this to cut out two side fronts. For the front; I cut out a slightly sloping centre panel, and two long rectangles for my pleated sections… (I did cut off those two jutty out bits at the centre top of the rectangles after taking this, just ignore them, sorry)
Carefully measured out the pleats, alternating 2cm and 3cm gaps, and pinned, folded and pressed in place…
At the back I sewed the peaks of the pleats in 0.5cm seams, and sewed the little skinny centre panel to the pleated panels at their centre edges.
I then fanned out the bodice at the outer edges, leaving pleats of 2cm depth at the centre edge of the panels, and 1cm depth at the outer edge. I’m aiming for a bodice with nicely sun-rayed pleats here…
Then finally used the Burda 8071 centre front pattern piece to cut out a centre front. I left the top centre edge high and uncut, so the centre front is not cut as deep a “V” as the pattern piece above it.
Sewed the side fronts to the centre front piece… For the shoulder straps I used two rectangles, slightly curved… pinned them how I wanted them to be on the bodice, with a little pleat at the bottom…
The lining pieces were cut with no pleating.
I also wanted a waist tie at the back of the dress, to pull in the waist and nip it in. This was a simple matter of cutting out two long rectangles, of equal width to the back midriff pieces, with a long angled edge at the end.
These were sewed in the side seams of the midriff pieces, before attaching the midriff piece to the bodice.
For the skirt; the fabric I am using is not sheer so a skirt lining is not essential. However I like for the innards of my dresses to be finished as completely and as beautifully as possible, and I also wanted a big flared petticoat effect with this skirt, so I cut out two skirt pieces using the facing fabric. The skirt of this pattern is a quite densely pleated as well as flared skirt, and while I wanted the flare I didn’t want that extra bulk of a pleated waistline on the petticoat (slimline, please!) so I cut the petticoat pieces to be straight A-line, with no pleating at the top.
This is a work in progress… I have several top-secret Christmas sewing projects on the go as well as this, and I will post pictures of these plus this dress on or after Christmas Day…
Later dudes!
Who said I’m a colourless dresser? Sometimes I do don brights. And when one has made the decision to go cheerful, well one may as well go overboard, no? Well, to fully compensate for all the neutral days in between, that is. As in, when I cast my eye back over the days here in which I have made the effort to take a photo they roll past neutral, colourless, quietly tasteful, a bit dull, then all of a sudden, whammy! A bright day. So today is one of those days. A makeup day.
