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!

Need a Lift?

It was only a matter of time. After several years of sewing and a decade and a half struggling to find ones that suit me, I have finally started sewing bras! I have been thinking about it, reading up on it, and planning to do so for a few months now, and at last this week I got started. But before I share my initial creation, a few thoughts on bras in general:

The more I sew, the more frustrated I become with the limitations of ready to wear clothing. I am increasingly aware of FIT and how a garment should properly sit on the wearer’s body, and therefore increasingly aware of how incredibly POORLY ready to wear does this. I am also increasingly aware of what an impossible task it would be to mass produce clothing that truly did accomodate the millions of truly unique body shapes out there. I know they have to pick standards. I do wish they hadn’t arbitrarily picked a body type smaller than the average American (wouldn’t it make the most sense to pick the *actual* average?). But I digress.

Bras are the worst problem I have personally encountered for fit. I’ve heard over and over again lately that the vast majority of American women are wearing the wrong sized bra. My initial thought every time is “DUH!” How in the world could we all wear the right bra when most stores carry a very small range of sizes?? Personally, I know how to measure myself, and lately I have taken to remeasuring before I buy bras (since weight gain and loss, a pregnancy, 21 months nursing, then weaning, have meant fairly frequent changes in my bust size over the past 3 years or so). Despite this, most stores I’ve tried DON’T carry my size. I am big busted, yes, but I’m not freakishly large. There are many women in this world (several of whom I know personally) who are quite a bit bustier than I am, some of them on smaller frames than mine… and yet most stores, even lengerie shops, just don’t carry my size.

I think in many cases, women wear the wrong bra because it’s the best they can find. If a store doesn’t carry a 36DDD, for example, a women might be inclined to believe the salesgirl who claims “A 38DD is the same thing!” But it’s really not. Truth be told the CUPS should be the same size for those two bras, and hold the same amount of breast tissue, but moving up to a larger band size WILL mean the bra is not supportive. And frankly the bigger breasted you are, the more you need that support. And heaven forbid you are bigger… at this moment in time, I wear a 38G. To accomodate my bosoms with the “down a cup, up a band size” method I’d have to go to a 40F (not in your everyday stores), 42DD (maybe in stores) or 44D before I had cups that fit right. At by that band size, you can pretty much expect the bra to fit like a belt.

(On a lovely side note though, I found some instructions for altering that bra so that it does fit right, by taking in the band, here.)

So, I have alternated between buying slightly too small bras, or shopping at the special bra shop that carries non standard sizes. (If you’re in Tampa, the Pennyrich bra shop has a huge range of sizes, as well as specialty bras such as masectomy and maternity bras).

This brings me to my next rant. If a woman has the know how to size herself (good articles on that here and here) and finds she isn’t a standard size, but takes the initiative to drive an hour from her home to the specialty shop (yep, it took me an hour to get there, with my baby in tow) so she can wear the correct size, guess what she’s greeted with? $80+ bras that come in her choice of beige, beige, or beige. Am I alone in my distate for beige? Personally, I find it to be unsexy, boring, and an absolute magnent for dinge. Is it too much to ask that the bra I paid $80 for at least **attempt* to be pretty?

And in addition to all of these issues there are still challenges finding the right shape (I prefer rounder cups rather than pointier ones) from such a small selection of correctly sized bras, not to mention COMFORT and hopefully a good value. From what my friends tell me, and what I’ve seen now that I’ve looked, it is equally challenging for small breasted women to find their correct size – how many AA bras have you seen lately? And of course maternity bras, masectomy bras, etc. have painfully few options available.

Personally, I think there are many, many women out there who would get in line to buy the right bra if such a thing existed.

My own wish list for my dream bra would be: a properly sized bra with a snug band that has a wide elastic at the bottom of the band for the best support – but not the picot elastic since the little decorative bumpy bits tend to irritate my skin after a while. I want SOFT fabrics and properly finished seams, round cups, relatively full coverage but not so much so that I have to buy a whole new wardrobe of higher-necked shirts (something halfway between a demi and a full coverage bra would be my personal ideal). I want a very thin bit of padding in the lower half of the cup just to reinforce it and add more support, but not so much that I’m noticeably larger; and I want this padding under a layer of something soft like tricot. I do want underwires, and I want them to sit where they were meant to, right under my breasts, without creeping down and pressing into my ribcage. I want broad straps that sit in the right spot on my shoulders where the weight is best carried (but of course with the fabulous band on this bra, there shouldn’t be too much weight held by the straps) and I want the strap adjusters, if any (better still would be straps that were the right length to begin with) in the back because the hard plastic pieces and the seams attaching the adjuster tend to hurt if they lie on the top of my shoulders carrying weight. To finish the wish list off, I want my dream bra to come in a variety of pretty colors, with coordinating panties available in my size, and I want the bra at a reasonable price.

I honestly don’t expect ready-to-wear to have quite exactly this, because it never has. But I can certainly make my own.

And that will be our next post.

It’s a hit!

My Aunt Bonnie sent me an email to let me know, she finally had the opportunity to wear her white dress to a gig with Late Night Brass at the Gulfport Casino Ballroom, and she got a great reaction! When she first arrived, someone literally said “wow!” And she received several more compliments through the evening. I’m so delighted to know it worked well for her!

I made a skirt for myself!

The story you are about to read is real.  Only the measurements have been changed to protect the innocent.

I found some cute fabric at a good price recently and decided I wanted to make a little skirt out of it.  I invisioned something about knee length, a bit fuller than an A line probably cut out of a few more pieces.  I made my own pattern, by taking my measurements and doing some math.

My belly dips a little bit at the navel, and I find it most flattering to wear skirts just a bit above that so the fabric can kind of smooth the line (I always wear shirts untucked over a skirt, preferably a bit fitted, and coming a bit below the navel).  I didn’t want the skirt to poof out too high up, added bulk where I really don’t need it.  So, I took my waist measurement where I wanted the waistband of the skirt to lie, another measurement where I wanted to start the flare, and measured the height between the two.  I also measured the length I wanted.

For the sake of this post, let’s call that waist measurement 27 inches (ha!) and the lower measurement 30 inches.  I decided I wanted 6 panels of fabric for the skirt and so I divided 27 by six (4.5) and drew a line that length on my pattern tracing paper, plus an extra 1/2″ for seam allowances (I use a 1/4″ allowance when I make my own patterns – generous seam allowances waste fabric and make curves harder to sew, in my experience).  I drew a perpendicular line down and added a second line segment for my lower body measurement, (30/6=5, plus the seam allowance would be 5.5″).

Connect the dots:

Next, I extended that perpendicular line down to get the total length I wanted for the skirt, and drew a horizontal line as a basis for my hemline, twice the width of the waistline.

More connecting dots:

I tried to draw more of a curve than an angle where the two dot-connecter lines meet up so the skirt would fall better:

And I added a curve to the hemline:

Since both curves where drawn freehand and I didn’t want funky asymetrical pieces, I folded the pattern piece in half lengthwise and cut both layers at once:

I did the whole thing a second time, to create separate pattern pieces for the front and the back.  The back piece is a bit longer, and flares a little more, because I was pleased with that effect on Bonnie’s dresses.

I took a break from my meticulous photo taking at this point and cut out 6 front pieces and 6 back pieces (three each for the lining, and for the top layer).  I worked on the lining first.  Sewed the front pieces right sides together, serged the seams, and pressed towards the back.  Sewed the back pieces right sides together, serged the seams, and pressed towards the back.  Sewed the front to the back along the seam that would fall on my right side (serged and pressed) and then measured the other side with the zipper I’d bought, marked on the fabric just below where the zipper would go in, and sewed and serged below that point.

Since I cut the back pieces longer than the front pieces, the hemlines didn’t match up at the side seams (no surprise there):

I trimmed them to create a smooth curve.

Then I hemmed the lining with your standard boring fold, press, pin, stitch method.  Here is the finished lining:

I sewed the outer skirt in the same manner as the lining, right up until the hemline.  For the outer skirt I cut a 10″ wide strip of polka dot fabric and sewed it, right sides together, to the hemline of the skirt.  Then I turned up the raw edges and pressed them, folded the polka dot fabric in half up over the hemline (shown below), pinned, and topstitched the whole thing down.  Sorry I didn’t photograph more of this.  I was sooooo ready to be done by this point and getting impatient with a photo for every step (which slows me down a lot).

I sewed the skirt and lining right sides together along the waist, turned right sides out, pressed, and topstitched the waist.  Sewed in my zipper and I was good to go!  Here it is:

Eva saw me posing in front of our “backdrop” curtains and had to come join me for the photo op.  She’s a little ham already.

Dress Form Boob Job

My dress form got implants yesterday.

Now that Shawn’s shirt is finished, I get to spend some time sewing for me with all those lovely fabrics I bought on sale.  One of my first steps was to adjust my dress form to a size I could use.  The problem with the dear is that she is molded plastic, and as adjustable as she is (with dials at the waist, hip, and bust) she is always going to be a… C cup, I think.  Which I have not been in many, many years.  So, if I set her bust measurement to mine, then her ribs are quite a bit larger than mine, and the result is that the blouses and peasant tops and empire waisted or wrap style dresses I hope to make will all fit her very, very differently from how they’ll fit me.  Which largely defeats the purpose of having a dress form!

So, in a moment of inspiration, I decided she needed a boob job.  I dialed down her bust until her ribcage measurement equalled my own (blurry on purpose… wouldn’t you love to know).  Then, I pulled out a nice clean nursing bra I never actually wore (because Eva weaned) but that fits correctly, and tried it on her.  I unsnapped the cups and stuffed them full until her bust measurement also equalled my own!  Yes, those are plastic grocery store bags.  I’m sure I could have found something to produce a more natural look, but she’s plastic already and this is what I had on hand, for free, easy to grab a hold of.

I was so pleased with the outcome of this that I padded her belly too.  Because the reality also is that I do not have an hourglass figure… I have a four months pregnant figure, even though I haven’t been pregnant at all in over two years.  So now she’s got a trimmer curve to the small of her back (like me) and a nice pouch in the front (also like me).  She resembles me far more than she used too (though if I get into any more fitted garments, I’ll need sturdier padding for her belly and a bit more work on getting quite the right shape).  For the time being though, this should help me make minor adjustments for fit and drape, which I will want to do when I get started on a couple of dresses in the near future.

Here she is wearing my favorite shirt, so you can get the full effect:

Note to self: don’t bleed on the dress

My aunt Bonnie came over this afternoon to try on the white dress – hooray!  Shortly before she came, Eva just begged to go pick blackberries in the back yard.  I always get scratched up to no end from the tiny hook shaped thorns on the blackberry bramble.  So despite a thorough handwashing, I didn’t notice that one finger was still bleeding slightly until I saw the BRIGHT red drops on Bonnie’s dress as I was attaching the hooks and eyes.

Thankfully, prompt application of hydrogen peroxide removed the stain *completely*.  We determined where the hooks and eyes should go on the neck strap, confirmed that one spot on the hem in the back needed to be straightened, and addressed the corset which was bunching slightly in the front.  All three minor issues have since been resolved and the dress is finished!

We took a few pictures when Bonnie was here this afternoon.  I hope to take better photos (with better lighting, where you can see the difference between white chiffon and white satin) soon but for the moment I will go ahead and post what I have.  Looking good, Grantie!  Looking good!