Self drafted fairy dress

 Hi Friends, hope you’re all doing well!

Check out this dress! It's self drafted and though to be honest it came out just a smudge overkill fem but it also make me so proud of myself. This was such a fun journey and in the end it reminds be of like a cross between a 60’s gogo dancer and a woodland fairy.

Let’s talk about this fabric first. It’s Atelier Brunette rayon twill and I got it from Minerva the UK haberdashery. When I saw it, I just knew it was going to make something draped and excessive and beautiful. When it arrived, straight out of the package it had a sheen I wasn’t expecting, but otherwise was mostly in line with what I had anticipated, but once I washed it, it was the perfect matte cloud-like twill I had expected. It’s fluffy, opaque, drapes, but still substantial.

This dress was inspired by a mix between a Zimmerman style, and just the overall feel of a lot of free people boho/festival style dresses.

I have a customized dress form so I was able to drape this completely on her, but I thought it might be fun for me to show you how these pattern pieces would compare to a normal bodice and skirt block so you can alter a pattern you already have in your stash to make something similar if you so wished.

  

As you can see the bust darts and hip darts are replaced with gathers in this case and to add a little puff to my sleeve cap I increased the height of the should cap. You can think of this increased height as the amount needed to fluff up and then curl back down to meet the shoulder seem again. Puffy shoulders are also great in that it takes out all the easing you would normally have to do for a sleeve. It’s the only time (that I can think of) that you would want to have puckers while you’re sewing. What mischievous freedom, am I right???

 

One of the things I really like about free people dresses (not that I have that many) is that they often don’t have zippers. This is something I played around with when I was in school and also something I have come to admire. I kind of like the idea of working closures into the style of the garment, rather than hiding a closure in a seam. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not like turning my nose up at invisible or hidden zippers, but I kind of like that old-world throw back of buttons and ties, so I wanted to explore that with this make.

As with all designs I wanted to make sure there was a sense of balance- which I know might be funny looking at this gal, with all the volume, but to me it works because the bust and biceps are well fitted. Because of that, again, to me, I felt like that afforded me volume at the hips, bell sleeves and shoulder caps. Additionally, the volume runs vertically at the sides, while the front and back lay mostly flat. Between you and I, I was also wanting to add big billowy cargo pockets over my hips, but I got too excited as I neared the end, and never added them. I still might though…

So getting back to the closures, the whole thing slips over my head. Wide beefy twill tape runs through the continuous side openings which I can loosen while I’m putting it on and then cinch tighter and tie into big chonky bows or more demure knots. This also means that, this dress will grow and shrink with me, which I love.

I made two muslins of this dress before I dared cut into my final fabric, the first out of some scraps of fake rayon (ie poly) twill. In my original design I had the back completely solid and the front with a more defined key hole that closed with another tie, but it definitely felt too distracting… I think because without it the the front and back are flat and the sides have volume, and that messed with that bifurcation. The back, somehow felt too stuffy, weird I know, because there were already the side cut outs, the front key hole aaaaand the high low hem, but I dunno, it was what it was. It felt… too enclosed. So I threw a hole in the back to appease my eye. Lol.

The first muslin was also a great way for me to work through how I was going to make all these designs actually work. You know, it’s one thing to draw something on paper or envision it in your head, but it’s a totally different thing to actually make it work, in 3D, in real life and let me give you a great real life example for this. The neck, side holes and now added back hole were all going to have to be finished somehow. Sorting through all the finishing techniques in my head, I basically had the following to choose from:

hem: ie fold twice and sew
bias binding: ie cut some bias sew it around all the curves, press it, clip it and double fold it back to the wrong side and top stitch
facings: ie same as the bias bind technique, except with custom pattern pieces cut to the size and shape of the areas that need finishing

I wrote those out in basically the order of complexity and ‘extra’ work involved. So you can imagine, I was trying to avoid the most amount work, which was the facings, if for no other reason then I hate cutting out facings. They just seem so wasteful to be honest since they are always crazy shapes but so shallow at the same time. However, I just knew in my bones that hemming the edges was not going to work, especially for the side holes which I was going to need some sort of channel for the ties to be encased in. So I started with extra wide bias tape. Which I made out of more scrap fabric and long story short, it did not work. The curves were too sharp to get around while still being able to fold over and leave a channel. It wasn’t laying flat and it just wasn’t worth the time, energy and fabric scraps to get it right. So I bit the bullet and drafted facings.



I tested the facings out on my second muslin and they worked a treat. Love when that happens, especially because that was the last idea I had. Yes the fabric consumption is less efficient, but sometimes you must make great sacrifices for fashuun. Also- that muslin came out amazing- something I still need to go back and hem, cause you can bet your bottom I plan to wear that one as well. This is my second muslin before and after putting on the bell sleeves, I kind of love how it looks both ways:

Anyways, this blog post has been loooong to say the least, so I will leave you here with my lessons learned and creativity laid bare. I hope you enjoyed and happy sewing, friends!!

Kten