Another Christmas Gift

Quick post today, as I’m pleasantly exhausted from a long day playing with my Girly. The following pics are of a custom skirt and top that I made for another loved one for Christmas. The skirt is a rayon batik fabric, cut into a very full and flouncy 2 1/2 circle skirt! The top is made from a nylon stretch fabric, hand dyed royal blue to match the skirt.

Hillary’s Design

One of my local clients for whom I made a dress previously, using a commercial pattern she loved, returned to have me bring to life a design idea of her own. I *love* these sorts of projects, the opportunity to create something truly unique, and to help a client who would otherwise be unable to realize their vision. Hillary described her idea to me in depth, we talked back and forth about the fabrics to use and the best way to construct it, and then I sketched out what I pictured from her description. I set about pattern drafting, draping, and bringing a muslin mock-up into being so that we could check the fit and fine tune the design. And then, at last, the final product!

The custom ensemble consists of a mermaid shaped skirt made of black matte satin. It’s fully lined, with layers of petticoat netting at the bottom to hold the shape of the skirt. On the outside, three tiers of satin ruffles cascade down, with a little hint of black and white paisley charmeuse peeking out of the middle ruffle. The jacket is also made of black matte satin, with black charmeuse and paisley charmeuse ruffles at the sleeve hems and neckline. The jacket body is extremely fitted, and has several pieces of boning to help hold its dramatic shape. 

The finishing touch – those buttons! Hillary brought a dozen different buttons over to hold up to the nearly-finished jacket so we could pick the perfect pair. And aren’t they FABULOUS? Really just the right finishing touch! And, the whole thing looks amazing on Hillary – a perfect fit both for her figure and her self!

The Betty Bridal Gown

I have a deep love of 1950’s fashion that dates back to my childhood days, watching old reruns of black and white sitcoms. I still adore Laura Petrie. So, I recently decided to design and sew a 50’s inspired bridal gown to list in my etsy shop. It was so much fun to make! And fun to model too. Enjoy!

Satin and Lace Bridal Gown

This beautiful gown was custom made for an Etsy client who was married a few months ago. The design was heavily influenced by an inspiration photo she found. It’s a strapless white satin gown with a short train, with an open front lace jacket that ties on with a chiffon sash onto which I hand sewed the beautiful broach you see pictured. This one was a lot of fun to make. My best wishes to the bride and groom!

Website updates

Alongside my efforts to catch up on blogging, I have taken the time to perform some much needed updates to my website. I hadn’t added any new photos since early last spring, and I have added photos and descriptions of a dozen garments made in the time since then. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Playing Catch Up

I’m behind. Months behind. My apologies to those of you who have followed my blog in the past, when it was updated routinely.

Thankfully, it’s a matter of too much, rather than too little, to say. Business has been booming and I’ve enjoyed a wide variety of projects to occupy my time. The result however has been that, at the end of twelve hour days of sewing, I lack the creative energy to write about what I have made. This month, I seem to have a bit of breathing room for the first time since early last September, and I intend to make the most of it! I have already updated my website with photos of many of my recent creations, and I plan to work this month on playing catch up here on the blog.

More will follow soon, but for the time being, please enjoy this photo of a corset I made as a Christmas gift for one of my loved ones. The fabric is a beautiful hand dyed silk charmeuse, with black lace accents. Inside the corset, sturdier fabric and multiple pieces of steel boning provide phenomenal support and shaping. The gift was well received, and the woman for whom I made it is thrilled to have the option of wearing strapless garments for the first time in a very long time!

Teal Elegance

This gown was custom designed for a client with a beautiful, dramatic hourglass figure for a formal event this autumn. She has a very difficult time finding clothing that flatters her figures, as most gowns that fit her bust and hips are far too loose for her narrow waist, making her look shapeless and larger than she is. She wanted a design that accentuated her waistline, and expressed an interest in a one-shoulder strap. I sent her sketches of several ideas, and the gown below was her favorite.

Birth of a Muslin

I spent a couple days this past week drafting the pattern and sewing up the muslin for a bridal gown I’ll be making in the near future. I thought I’d share the experience with my readers!

I pretty much always begin by sizing my dressform to my client’s measurements. This particular gown will be made for a plus sized gal with an hourglass figure, whose measurements were a bit larger than my adjustable dressform adjusts. I needed a good representation of her figure to be able to drape the bodice, and I didn’t want to swing for one of those deluxe uber adjustable dressforms just for the muslin. So, I cut 4″ wide strips of quilt batting and wrapped them around the form to pad it.  I had lots of control over *where* the extra padding went, and the batting is just fuzzy enough to sort of stick to itself which made it easy to put it on. Right after taking this snapshot, I took a roll of masking tape to it so I wouldn’t have to deal with the batting shifting each time I put the muslin onto and off of the dress form.

Once I was sure I had a good size and shape, I drew up the pattern for the bodice lining. For the lining I used a simple princess seamed strapless pattern, converted it to a sweetheart neckline, shortened and tapered the skirt. I left it a little longer than the final bodice would be, so I could draw out the asymmetrical line where the bodice attaches to the skirt in 3D, right up on my dress form. (It doesn’t show terribly well in the picture, but I drew my line straight on the muslin with a ballpoint pen). I also adjusted the back of the bodice, to allow for corset style lacing in the back. I drafted the skirt pieces and matched them up to the bodice to mark out the same angled lines for that seam.

Having removed the skirt pattern from the bodice lining, I moved on to draping the bodice itself. This was by far the most time consuming part of the process. I pinned muslin fabric straight onto the bodice lining, taking up small, irregular pintucks. I didn’t want the dress to look pleated, but rather to have a slightly random, organic look to the ruching, so I spent a lot of time undoing and redoing the pinning, twisting and stretching the fabric, until I had everything in place. Then after a strong blast of steam from my iron to set the wrinkles (and make them a tad less poofy), I had to carefully remove the pins from the lining, and replace them in the outer fabric, so I could take it over to my machine and stitch it down. Had to do this four times for the different sections of ruched fabric, then sew them together.

Once the bodice fabric was sewn together I attached it to the lining, and then sewed the skirt onto the bodice. Added the laces in the back, and there you have it, a muslin that gives a really good feel for what the final product will be!

Something Blue

Recently, I created a beautiful custom skirt for a lovely plus sized bride to wear to her wedding. She already owned a stunning tight lacing corset that had been custom made for her in a beautiful silvery blue silk dupioni fabric. She wanted to wear this corset on her wedding day, and I could easily see why! It had been beautifully made; the workmanship was just lovely. The corset brought in her waist by several inches and gave her a dramatic hourglass figure, and it had a romantic, almost fairy tale feel to it.

The bride presented this photo to me as an inspiration picture. She loved the lower portion of this bridal gown, and wanted a skirt made to look like that, from the piece of silk dupioni she had remaining after her corset had been made and chiffon fabric purchased to match. I could see that we needed to take great care for this; there was exactly 44″ by 100″ of the fabric remaining and it would take all of it to be able to make a skirt with the trumpet shape and train in the inspiration picture. I drafted the pattern carefully, and double and triple checked my pattern pieces to be sure they would fit within the available fabric piece. When she let me know her muslin needed a few adjustments to fit, I offered to create a second muslin before working with the silk – an extra step I don’t often take – because we wouldn’t have a second chance once I cut the silk. And I’m glad we did this – the final version of the pattern left less than a 1/4″ of allowance from the edge of the silk fabric. Absolutely all of it was needed!

Once the silk skirt was sewn up, I was able to drape the layered ruffles of chiffon fabric that sort of cascade down the skirt. I studied the inspiration picture at this point, to try to create a very similar shape and feel to the original, but proportioned for the skirt. This both required that the chiffon begin lower on the skirt than where her corset would sit, and that it be of a length to drape beautifully on a shorter and wider figure than the model in the inspiration picture.

I’m really proud of the end result on this item, and I think my client will look simply breathtaking on her wedding day!

Elizabethtown

Have you ever seen a dress you loved in a movie, on the red carpet, or in some magazine, but been completely unable to find one you could purchase? One of my clients had fallen completely in love with the little black dress actress Kirstin Dunst wears in the movie Elizabethtown, but despite her best efforts my customer couldn’t find a similar dress anywhere. So she asked me to recreate the dress for her.

Here’s a few pictures of the original dress.

And here’s mine:

I used a polyester matte jersey fabric for the dress to have the dressy look and a comfortable feel my client wanted and to avoid the shiny look of a satin or taffeta.

I was able to use one of my favorite commercial patterns as the foundation for the pattern, altering as needed for my customer’s extra long torso, and the knee length she wanted for her dress. I made self-fabric ties for the neck, and used a simple satin ribbon to create the trim along the neckline from the original dress.

The end result was a very good replica of the inspiration, if I may say so!