Sunday, September 22, 2013

I have been a little busy

New Look 6071
And I have pictures for you this time. I have a dressmaker’s dummy (form?), which works for showing the clothes. Truth be told, I’m a little disappointed with how it works to use for actually fitting my clothes. I can adjust the thing a bunch of different ways, but at the end of all the dial twirling, it’s still just measurements around – there’s no way, for example, to make the back narrower like mine and forget about getting the bust to be my size. I think this dress form is maybe a B cup. We won’t talk about my cup size – suffice it to say, I’m a bit further down the alphabet.

But the dress form at least lets me show what I’ve finished.

First up is the New Look dress I mentioned last week. I promise the dress doesn’t look quite so saggy on (again, it’s hard to replicate the human body on a dress form) but you can see how the cross over stuff looks. I'm very pleased with the way this dress fits me; best of all, I did no altering.

Frankendress 1
Next is a dress I cobbled together from two patterns (a Frankenpattern if you will). I’m quite pleased with this dress actually. The original pattern (McCalls 6069) calls for a cowl neck in the back, and I found that both annoying and excessive. So I took the back bodice from another pattern, re-drafted my armscye and here’s the result. The fabric is pretty interesting too. It's a sort of waffle weave, almost like long john material only much thinner. There are tiny sparkled throughout – it's a subtle effect, but they're there. I want to find a skinny black patent leather belt to wear with this and I may take this on our trip next month. If you’re wondering, the dress form has a winter white turtleneck on it. I find the white less distracting than the red of the form. Unfortunately the white sort of shows through plus I didn’t pull the sleeves through (didn’t want you to think this is a jumper).


Frankendress 2
Next is a dress on its third life. It started as this skirt, which I realized was not at all flattering on me and even if it were, I’d never wear it. Then I remade the skirt and added a bodice to become this cowl neck dress (which is, yes, McCalls 6069). Again, there’s just too much material and I never wore the dress. So now it’s resurrected itself one final time. I like the neckline on this dress and I’ve always loved the material. I think/hope it’s a keeper in this form.

Frankensweater
Finally, today I did another Frankenpattern. I have a waterfall cardigan that is about as tailored as those things gets. I also have a pattern for a more typical waterfall cardigan but didn’t want swaths and swaths of fabric in the front. So I traced out the front of the RTW cardigan and sweated bullets over the armscye. I like the fabric, I’m so-so on the results. We’ll see if it continues on in this form or if I give up on it or make it come back as something else.

2 comments:

Harriet said...

They're all beautiful, but I especially like the third. As for FitBit, I recommend dancing while making dinner!

Magpie said...

armscye! never heard that word before. cool.

they're great, your dresses.