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Sunday, 11 September 2011

'Get my sewing confidence back' dress

OK so I had a bit of a tough time a couple of weeks ago when I spent a couple of days attempting new things and achieving nothing... so - I decided to make use of my corselette toile (which happened to fit fine but wasn't long enough for the actual wedding dress to attach dress net) and a bit of blue taffeta to make this dress in the hope that I will achieve something at the end of it. I made Simplicity 4070 view D with the following alterations:


I added a waist stay and separate closures for the lining layer (as it was the corselette toile); 
I omitted the parallel ribbons and replaced it with one thin pink grosgrain ribbon; 
I shortened the skirt slightly; and
I added nylon dress net to the bottom of the corselette to add some volume. 


Here are a few photos:



I am happy with the result and it did help me get my confidence back but I did learn a few lessons from this though:

1) be careful which side of the lining that I am attaching to the fashion fabric... as silly me! I managed to attach it incorrectly; and
2) machine blind-hemming is hard! (a zoomed in photo may give away how uneven the hem is!) I will definitely not attempt to do this on my wedding dress. doing it by hand will give it more control although of course being more time consuming. 

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4 comments:

  1. robinhb23 January 2012 at 03:48

    Your work is beautiful! I've been looking for a simple tea-length gown for my wedding this spring and your dress on patternreview.com was one of the few that won me over to this pattern. Question...did you use boning in the bodice? The pattern doesn't appear to call for it but it seems like it might be appropriate.

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    1. Alice24 January 2012 at 21:43

      Hi there, aw I'm really pleased to be able to help you with your pattern selection! I've used this pattern for this blue dress and also for my bridesmaid dress (I assume you've seen that already on my blog - if not that might give you another idea of what it looks like in another colour/fabric.

      Yes I did use boning in the bodice for both dresses. I used spiral steel boning which I found more comfortable to wear than rigilene. I can't remember whether it is called for by the pattern but I wanted a nice fit for the dresses. For a wedding dress I would highly recommend using boning as the outcome is so much nicer.

      Are you making a toile? if so, I would suggest trying out boning on that first. Let me know if you have any more questions.

      Good luck with the wedding dress! Do you have a blog so I can see the progress?

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  2. Melbourne Cafe Hunters25 May 2012 at 10:09

    Wow the dress you made looks amazing
    I was wondering, how long did you take to make the dress?
    And is it hard? I don't know much about sewing but I really want to make this dress.

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    1. Alice25 May 2012 at 12:23

      Hi there,

      Thank you 

      I would say it took me a weekend to make this dress. It wasn’t an advanced project, but personally I would not recommend this for a beginner. This is because you will need to play around with boning, and although it’s not that complicated, I’m glad it wasn’t something I tackled in my first few projects.

      If you haven’t sewn a lot before, I would recommend making a simple top/sundress first to start you off. One of my first projects was New Look 6457 (you can see my review on PatternReview by clicking through the widget on the left of the screen) and I think that would make a nice beginners project.

      HTH

      Alice

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