Week Two

The deadline is tomorrow 31st, halloween ofcourse and its been another very busy week at work. However I have found enough time for another creation and enjoyed every second. So here is what I have done. I hope you enjoy.

At the beginning of the week I had a little trip to etsy.com for a bit of inspiration. I already had some fabrics in mind. A lovely pink piece I already had and a stripy green flowery off-cut from another dress I made a while ago that I still wanted to use. Above are a few dresses that caught my eye. I really liked the buttons on the first dress and after making my first button hole on the previous creation, all I can think of is buttons. The second dress gave me the idea to do sleeves. Another item of dressmaking I have not yet tackled, apart from coat sleeves ofcourse. eek! With the second dress I was also attracted to the full skirt. Its got a really nice fun feel. Very cute. And for the third dress it is ofcourse the back, or lack of. I really like backless dresses, although I know the weather at the moment isn't really suitable but I have never really found a nice one in the shops so why not create my own.

Here is the fabric I am going to use. I am going to make the whole dress out of the pink minus the sleeves. These are going to be the stripy green material. I found the delightful little green button in my jar of buttons. A fun addition I think.

New Look 6824 from The Shuttle in Shipley, West Yorkshire

Here is the pattern I am going to be using. Its a really great pattern that I found with my mum in a fabric shop in Shipley. My mum said it would be a good one to buy because of how many different dresses you could make. I have already made a few dresses with this pattern and mixing it with other patterns.

I thought this was a good point to show you a little of my progress. At this point I am attaching the skirt to the bodice, which involves a lot of playing around with pleats. When cutting out the pattern I attached pins at the right points to help with the pleats. There will be many different ways of doing this but this way works for me. I have layed out the bodice on top of the skirt and lined everything up. Then pinned in the right place for sewing together.

Above you will see that I have added another button alongside the little green one I found earlier. This one is spotty and a nice contrast to the stripy sleeves.

When I trimmed the excess off the bottom of the skirt to make it fit, I was left with quite a bit of material that I thought might be quite nice to attach underneath, hopefully creating a bit more of a full looking skirt. And it worked. Whoop!

The final piece! I am really pleased with how it looks and very much looking forward to wearing it.