purple wood fairy - Part 3

hello everybody,

As mentioned in my previous post, the last weeks are/where rather stressful, I mainly worked on the concept of the collection I have to make this and next year in my School ( post about this will be up soon) . The design process is always pretty intense. but I also made some progress on the fairy dress. I´ll show you that first.


Over the last weeks I made the unserskirt with beige satin. ( I also sewed on the closures of the bodice, but that isn´t that exciting, just hooks/eyes and snaps).

And here is the process of making it, sadly I don´t made that much photos.

But after cutting the fabric I had two seperate pieces, each 1/4 of a circle, they got sewn together to form 1/2 of a circle, one side wasn´t completely sewn shut, I left about 10 cm open.

Then I folded the seam allowance over itself and sewed it down from the inside. so I had two rows of stitching on the outside. Not very pretty, but that didn´t bother me, since it is just a "Petticoat"

The top gets just folded over two times and then  stitched down, no waistband or someting similar. It gets fastened with a long ribbon, that got threaded trough the hemmed top, so the width is adjustable.



From the outside:



The hem was probably the most time consuming thing to do, I made a narrow hem, which is simple, but I needs a bit of efford. First half a cm gets folded over and sewn down, rather close to the edge.



Then the excess material gets trimmed away and the everything gets stitched down again.



The result is a beautiful narrow hem, that just needs a good ironing.



So now back to the bodice, as mentioned before, I sewed in all the closures, which means that the bodice is complete for now.

 Here is  the back, I am really proud that the closures are rather well hidden.

Here are the two pieces worn, I still have a lot of work ahead, but since I have a free week, Progress should be seen soon. (This two strange folds on te bodice will probably be removed too, I will give that a closer look, when I try everything on the next time.)

And before I forget it also doodled the concept for the jewelry that goes with this dress and bought some things for it as well.

thanks for reading, this pretty short post.

I hope you enjoyed it anyway:)

purple wood fairy - Part 2

hello everybody,
Progress on this dress is slow and I expect it to be slow in the next weeks too, because I have a lot of things to do, some for School, some aside from the School, but all in all I am lacking time for sewing.
But over the last two weeks I did manage to finish the bodice nearly completly, I just need to fix the gathered front, since it Looks very bad when worn.
After that I can move on to the skirts, which will be a challenge, since I have 4 layers there.


But let´s start with a walktrough of the bodice:

So I am not quite sure, where I stopped with my last blog post and I am actually too lazy right now to look it up so... I think I have sewn the shoulder seams and finished the edges on the arm side.


I started off with finishing the neckline and I did that with a trim and facing. First I basted this brown corded trim on the neckline, in the shape I desired just because I don´t have to worry about the shape, when I sew the facing.

Then the facing gets sewn on and I did that with a zipper foot, so the stitching is as close as possible to the trim. (the facing gets finished  before it gets sewn down)

It looked like this when sewn. to avoid the facing from slipping and therefor being visible when worn I stitched another time near the trim, but on the right side. you can see that in the photos below

You can see the additional stitch here:

After that I finished the edge of the back strap as well, so the front bodice base was done

Now for the purple overlay, cutting this was rather tricky, because I don´t had much material and a lot of pieces are cut on the bias, just because I wanted the stripes to be diagonal. That wasn´t a particulary good idea since the edges cut on the bias warped really badly so the pieces, especially the back ones were really out of shape, when I started working on them.

 The cut pieces:

 

I started with the front pieces. The edges were ironed over two times and the sewn down two times.

 I you are wondering how the bodice Looks form the inside:

And pinned to my dressform:

Moving on to the back: all the pieces were hemmed on the two sides, that means the side seam and the bottom was left raw.



With that done I could first sew the purple overlay to the base.  I just made one seam on the top (!)

The other sides were basted and the side with the eylets was left open, since I need to acccess the base for lacing.

 When all of this was done. I worked on the side seam, I sewed them with a seam allowance of 1 cm. and then finished them with with lace binding, but I doubled the size (two lace strips sewn together and then sewn on the seam allowance)



Then I have sewn the straps on te bodice by hand, so there isn´t any stitching visible on the outside and I also had to sew the boning channels ( former hem) of the purple organza to the satin, because I had the issue of it flipping over, when I put the bodice on.

Now for the waistband, I was really excited abou it since I loved the look of the purple organza flatlined with some really dark brown polyester-cotton.

I lined the waistband with white cotton, but you´ll see that later on.

The purple and broen get connected with a few basting stitches, also called flatlining.

The the edges were ironed to the wrong side, and also pinned in place, since the tended to flip over again. 

The next step was to sew the waistband on, which sadly is not documented well, since it was a trial and error experience for me. I did a lot of experimenting.

But I´ll try to explain.  to get it neatly finished on both sides.

the white lining gets sewn to the inside ( wrong side) the ironed over, so it lies flat.

The purple one gets pinned so it covers the stitching of the inner waistband.

then basically topstiched all around. but (!) I before I did that I finished the pieces that extended out of the bodice, which you can see on the very left side. I did sew that together first, right side to right side, then turned it inside out. After that I pinned the remaining waistband on and sewed over the side and top.

So I hope you unterstood what I mean and anyway thanks for reading :)



purple wood fairy - Part 1

hello everybody,

This is the first costume project this year, which was also announced in my "plans for 2018"
The process will be broken up in a few parts, mainly because this project is kind of complex and I don´t have much time, which makes the progress rather slow.

So I had a particular design to start with the sewing an patternmaking process:
Some of the fabrics I am using for this were in my stash, like the striped organza, orange chiffon and twisted brown trim. The other materials were bought have those in mind.

This time I want to show more of my patternmaking process. especially the draping part.

But first I did make the patterns for a half circle skirt ( first picture) and a full circle skirt (second picture)

 I don´t go in depth with the circle skirt pattern, there a are tons of tutorials on the internet, where it gets explained better than I would.

Then I begun draping the pattern, starting with the triangular insert in the front.  I cut the rough shape. then put it on the dressform and marked the exact shape.



 The back Panel is an extension from the front panel and serves as the back of the bodice.

 I used the same method as above.

I didn´t want any darts on the bodice. the space for the breast will be provided by a pleated front. I cut a rectangle and gathered it down the way I wanted it to look., then marked the strap, neckline, waist, triangular panel and side seam  and cut there.

The back straps was draped the same way.

Then I took the pieces of the dressform and transfered the pattern to paper, with this pattern I made a mock-up out of white muslin and organza.

The mock-up was a disaster, i had several things to change, including the whole shape of the gathered panel. I didn´t feel comfortable moving forward with so much changes, so I made another mock-up, which was a lot better, still not perfect. but the crucial parts worked out.

With the redone pattern I made a list of steps, so I won´t get confused and I  noticed that there a lot of steps.

 I also wrote down the prices of the materials, so I can calculate the costs, because I think this is really interesting.

This were the finished patternpieces. I cut the back panel two time, beacuse I have this diagonal lacing, which should look a bit more dynamic with the stripes.

 

I cut all the pieces out, The front part and the back straps were cut in a beige embroidered taffeta, everything else in beige satin.

I´ve sewn the two front pieces about halfway together, so I have enough room for the pleats.

I looked like this from the right side:

I basted the all the pleats, so they are secure while working on the whole bodice.

With that done I could sew the inserts shut.



After that I focused on the back panels. I sewed some white cotton strips on the edge, because the eyelets need some support.

Then I made a 1 cm hem, where boning will be inserted.



 I hemmed the top edge (I hemmed it with lace binding, this will get explained further down below), so the boning has a stopper.

It looked like this with the boning in. I marked all the eyelets with a blue removeable pen.

The eyelets were embroidered by hand  with half a strand of embroidery floss. I made 4 stitches in every direction and the filled them with stitches till I couldn´t see any fabric around the hole.

The back straps and armholes were finished with lace binding. The process is rather simple once you get the hang of it. The first step is to sew the lace to one side as close as possible to the edge.



Then the lace gets flipped onto the other side and sewn down.

I sewed the shoulder seam by connecting the baack strap to the front piece.

The edges gets turned inward one time and simply sewn down. At the curve of the armhole I had to clip the fabric so it lies more or less flat. i finished the clipped fabric  with a quick buttonhole-stitch by hand.

So thats it for part 1, the bodice isn´t finished of course, the next steps will be subject of part 2.

thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it