The Tropical Wrap Dress is DONE!!!

After working on this for four weeks (which is a new length of time record for me) I finally got the dress together on the weekend!  I still need to make the bolero, but the dress is done!

There was a bit of a mishap though...  I discovered what happens when you iron over your plastic tape measure...

Yep - it goes all melty and stretches and the printing transfers ONTO YOUR FABRIC!

Sigh!  Luckily its on the lining of the skirt so hopefully no-one will notice....

Anyway!  There was a lot of hand sewing to be done on this dress like the hem for instance:

And sewing on press studs, and other finishing bits that just couldn't be done by machine, so I spent a fair bit of time sitting on my butt in front of the television trying to pretend I was doing something else.  It was all worth it though, because after several hours effort I ended up with this:

I am so happy with it - to me its a really good effort to replicate a pattern without the pattern!  And like I said up the top, I am yet to do the bolero, but I'll have that done this weekend.  And serendipitously, I have been invited to a party the following weekend where the host would like us to wear green accessories - green accessories will go PERFECTLY with this dress!!!

Oh, I just realised I forgot to tell  you about the halter strap!

I put the dress on and put pins where I wanted the halter strap to attach, then I got out the tape measure and measured from one pin around the back of my neck to the other pin.

Then I made a strap that was green one side and parrots the other side, and put a button hole at each end (yes, I cheated and used a machine made buttonhole - I know!)

Then I sewed two lovely buttons on the inside of the bodice.  This way I can wear the dress without the strap if I want, or with the green side out, or the parrot side out!

So what do we all think?  I'm looking forward to getting the other piece of the ensemble finished and putting it all on - I think its going to look amazing (even if I do say so myself!)

Beccie
xxx

Its Coming Along!!

As per my last post, I spent a few hours last weekend re-drafting the pattern I came up with for the Tropical Wrap Dress to fix the bits I wasn't happy with.  It was actually way easier than I anticipated!

Old idea on the left, new idea on the right!

I kept the dart at the top (to accommodate my larger-than-a-B-cup boobs) and moved the pleats to the side.  It was so simple that I'm surprised I got it wrong the first time - anyway, you live and learn!  Thank goodness I made a muslin!!

I also added about 6 inches of width the the front skirt piece, but I didn't re-muslin it.  I'm confident it will be fine.

I then cut out all my pieces.  This took a while as I had to cut out the dress twice - once for the tropical print rayon and once in a vanilla colour rayon for lining.  The lining will enable me to hide seams and boning etc, and make the dress less see-through.  It will also stop my 'pop-of-colour' fabric from showing through.  More on this next week!

Here are the fabrics I'm using - vanilla rayon on the left, gorgeous tropical print rayon in the middle, and the 'pop-of-colour' lime green on the right.

Now!  To integrate the pop of colour into the rest of the dress, I decided to add a bobble trim to the top edge of the bodice pieces.  I'll be adding it to the front wrap of the skirt too.  In the past I've just hand sewn the trim on later, but I didn't want to do that this time - I wanted to sew the trim in the seam.  I fiddled around a bit and worked out how.

This is what I did:

1. Sew the sew-in interfacing to the lining fabric...

Rayon is a soft drapey fabric and this part of the dress really needs a bit of support, so I added a couple of inches of sew-in interfacing.  I sewed it at a foot-width from the edge so the line of stitching would not be visible on the finished piece.

2. Sew the trim to the right side of the dress fabric...

This took some thinking to make sure the trim would be the right way up on the finished piece... I'm not sure what this says about my thought process, but anyway!

I stitched the trim on at 5/8ths of an inch, which is the seam allowance.  And I used the zipper foot so I could get right up close to the edge of the trim.  If I was using ric-rac or something like that I could have just used a regular foot.

3. Sew both pieces together...
I didn't get a photo of this bit... sorry... but its pretty straight forward.  I left the zipper foot on and made sure that I was right up close the the bobbles once again.  It was a bit painful, and I did it   V  E  R  Y   S  L  O  W  L  Y.

4. Turn through and iron...
Ta da!!!

IT LOOKS SO AMAZING!!!!!

Even if I do say so myself...

I also had to remember to sew in the tie on the skinny side of the front bodice piece so I can tie the finished dress closed.  Its hard to remember these things when you are a) not working with a pattern and instructions; and b) you are distracted by how awesome what you are doing is looking!!!

I also had a fairly big debate with myself last week that could be titled 'To Shir or not the Shir'. 

I just cannot stand it when you are wearing a top thats either strapless or a halter, and the back piece falls down!!!  Drives me MAD!!!  I could put boning in the back to keep it up, but I really didn't want the bones to show, and I'm pretty sure that with this fabric they would.  That leaves shirring, which is time consuming, and creates other issues with the straight skirt.

I decided to go with the shirring option, so I spent about an hour doing this:

My shirring is far from awesome looking.  Its just so hard to get the lines straight when you have to pull at the fabric all the time!  But I'm happy with the end result.

Unfortunately it was right about now that I had to stop sewing, so this was all I got done.  I would have loved to get this finished, but its the kind of project that I want to really sink my teeth into, take my time, and not take short cuts.  That said though, I'm really hoping to get the skirt on it this weekend!  Then another weekend for the finishing touches (like hemming - blech!) and the bolero.

And I've already started sourcing amazing accessories too - more to come on that later!

How do you think I'm going - do you love it as much as I do?  And what do you think of the lime green?

Beccie
xxx

Shirring - I think it might be addictive!

There is something meditative about shirring - feeding a piece of fabric through the machine over and over to make lines of stitching...  I found it quite peaceful!

I hadn't shirred anything before so I read a few tutorials (mainly this one) and went from there.  Mine is nowhere near as neat as hers but you get the idea :)

I shirred the whole piece and then cut the size panels I wanted, because I needed two - one for each side of the zip.  My idea for construction was based on a vintage swimsuit that I have - two shirred panels are inserted in the back, and the ends are sandwiched between two layers of unshirred fabric.

That doesn't make much sense does it...

Does this help???

I also wanted to put boning in the bodice, and at the back where the zip is going, to give it some shape and support.  I thought the best place was to run the bones along the seam lines of the lining, like this:

That white stuff is the boning casing

So I put the bodice all together so all that was left to do was add the skirt and put in the zip.  The skirt was pretty easy, just two big panels, joined together and gathered to size.  The hard bit was getting the zipper it, it was last of all and manhandling it through the machine was a bit of a pain - however we made it!

Ta Da!!!

I totally ran out of time after this, so I haven't even tried it on yet.  Next post will obviously be me swanning around in the dress and the fabulous sparkly pineapple bag that started it all!!

Beccie
xxx