Completed Projects - Floofy pink dress (part 1)

As I alluded to in my previous post, revamping my Storm costume wasn't the only thing I tacked last Halloween. Until that point I had only sewn for myself, so when I had the opportunity to make my BFF's costume, I jumped at the challenge.

This idea had actually been kicking around for a while - a couple of summers ago my friend went Japan and picked up a pale blue gothic lolita bolero from the Angelic Pretty store. 

As adorable as it was, she couldn't figure out what to wear it with.  After discussing it for a while, we thought it might be cool to actually make something to wear it with.  To help give her some ideas, I sent her pictures of various elegant gothic lolita (EGL) style dresses.   She fell in love with a certain design from a shop called Mary Magdalene (which is sadly no longer available on the site), so we used that as our basis.

Her dress would be mostly pink, with a light blue underskirt with three rows of ruffles.  It would follow most of the same style lines - puffed raglan sleeves, sweetheart neckline, underbust seam - except the back would be fitted with darts (rather than lacing up), with in a 'V' rather than a square neckline.

With the style decided, it was time to get to work.  First, I got her measurements and drafted a basic bodice block.  I fixed all the fitting issues - which were minor, thank goodness! - and then modified that into what would be the main pattern.  I figured out my cutting layout, cut the fabric and sewed the main dress together.  Moment of truth - it was time for the second-to-last fitting. 

The dress, front view...

...and back view, before the lining/underdress and finishing (hence the weirdly 

pinned sleeves and exposed crinoline)

Success!  It actually fit and, best of all, the skirt looked nice over the crinoline (which was, of course, also pink). My first time sewing for someone else and things were going just as planned - could it be that this would actually go as smoothly as I hoped?

Not exactly.

Murphy's Law unfortunately reared its ugly head late into the process of making this. It started off with little things, which eventually culminated into me sewing over a finger(!) which, in turn, super-culminated with….partially destroying the dress(!!).

Valuable Life Lesson: if you have a habit of throwing clothes into the dryer to refresh them, make sure that the outfit with the monofilament-gathered ruffles has every last bit of the aforementioned monofilament snipped off. If not, horrible, terrible things can and will happen.

After having a series of freak-outs about this, I regrouped and salvaged what I could (thankfully there was some!). I bought more fabric, and then promptly ran into *another* issue - the new fabric was slightly different than the old one! Fortunately the difference was barely noticeable, but it proved to be yet another Valuable Life Lesson.

In the past I've heard seamstresses recommend buying fabric for a project in one continuous yardage due to possible variations in texture and colour that can occur between two batches of the same fabric. This is the first time I've actually experienced it though. Take it from me - get it all at the same time if you can, it'll spare you a headache!

After overcoming that hurdle, I quickly re-cut the needed parts and sewed it together again. Interestingly enough, going through the process a second time made it go even more smoothly and quickly than I'd hoped (it was sewn together in just a couple of sittings). I was finally able to take a breather, though the real challenge was still ahead - the giant hem ruffle and ruched strip that went over it!