I will spare you the photos

Beautifully finished with a double zig zag*

After sewing so many toiles of my dress I finally felt ready to sew my real fabric. I don't know why but I was terrified of that fabric. I have already (successfully) sewn more expensive fabrics, more slippery fabrics, fabrics that where more prone to fraying and any other hardship you might think of. But this fabric truly scared me.

Quiz question: How much fun is turning a corner with this fabric? I actually poked  a n 8 mm knitting needle right through several times. How can this even happen with such a tight weave?

So after psyching myself up with all those toiles I told myself to get a grip and just cut into the cloth already. And so I made lots of notches and hand basted all my seams (even the straight ones), tried out the best tension settings and stitch length on a scrap piece of fabric. Then I decided that sewing the lining first really wouldn't be procrastinating. 

One of my favourite seam finishes: Fold and stitch. In this case a zig zag stitch on the lining seams.

When I finally started sewing I was still afraid. And there was this nagging doubt that things would work out as nicely as in the muslins. But I kept sewing anyway. And then I tried the dress on. And quelle horreur! It has stress lines in places none of my muslins or the lining had them. And a ripply zip fastner! The zip was fine on just the lining and I had a notch every 5 cm to match up my seams. And for some reason you can see the facing peeking out in some parts!

No rippling when  lying flat. Also: This fabric can only be sewn once and I had already started unpicking here. Hence the pulled treads.

As fate would have it I all that procrastinating meant that I had to wear the dress out ripply zip and all. I had a great night and I got a lot of compliments on the dresses colour and cut and even more for being able to sew something like that. But I felt like Everyone was staring at my back and the ripply horrors there!

Couldn't they have noticed my perfect rolled hem instead? Both from the wrong side.

And the right. Isn't the fabric beautiful? Even  though the colours are of ...

The question remains: What am I going to do with the back. I have a feeling that a cool pin tuck design might help. But if it doesn't I'll have completely ruined the fabric.

Butterfly

*Once again sorry for the bad picture quality. I couldn't find the cable for my camera so I took all the pictures again with my phone.

Sewing my muslin(s) and sketches ... lots of them

Some sketches that didn't make the cut for various reasons.

Since I want this dress to fit really really well, I'm actually made a muslin. And then another one after I noticed that it looked amazing in dance posture but had some weird wrinkling and bunching when I'm standing naturally. Since I want the best of both worlds I made some alterations, decided that cut outs in back would be perfect for reducing fitting issues (with dance dresses they're always in the back, that's why most dance dresses don't have a back to speak of). And then I made another muslin and some alterations on that. And then another one.

Long story short: I'm up to muslin number four by now and it's "hopefully" (fingers crossed!) going to be wearable. Since I need a LBD I'm going to sew it in black with a different skirt. I also have enough fabric to swap the back to a "normal" one after I checked the fit.

Have I already posted my sketches? I know I drew a bunch with the intention of uploading them ... Please forgive the bad quality ... I can't draw to save my life and my scanner wasn't co-operating :(

The first couple of ideas I had ... I'd already thrown them overboard when I started these sketches. But I always find it fascinating to watch other people's ideas evolve and so I thought you'd do to ;) I just might have watched a lot of Ginger Rogers an Fred Astaire before drawing the sketch on the right. Here's a better view of the dress.

The dress on the right is basically the inspiration dress I posted a while ago in longer. Even though I made fun of the lower back design right after drawing it I do actually kind of like it now. Unfortunately I don't think it offers enough eh em ... support

The upper back designs look kind of weird and again there's a "support-problem", which is also existent in the bottom right one. The one on the bottom left is of course a classic. But I wanted something a bit different. But since I liked the cross at the back the most I decided to improve on that. Which ultimately led me too ...

The two "winner" designs. They where morphed together. See ho they'd have worked with both the princess cut and the triangles and circle skirt design?

What my dress will ultimately look like remains a surprise ;) What I can tell you is that the muslin will be sewn as a shorter version of the triangles and cirlce skirt dress. I will only post pictures of the muslin after I have checked the fit and converted it too a halter top.

In case anyone's wondering ... here's what the pattern for the "circle skirt" looks like:

Weird, no?

And here's how I got there:

A lot of slashing and pivoting. It looks like an eye! The white pointy thing was a dart. 

I have some fabric marking to do! See you soon!

Butterfly <3

Self-Punishment-Skirt

Most of you probably know by now that I love to dance.  And you've probably seen the beautiful standard gowns. If not just Google it (They have very full skirts and lots of rhinestones. And even more rhinestones :P.). So as  you can imagine dancing in a skirt is quite a different feeling from dancing in pants. That's why I always practice in skirts. Mine and those I sew for others are usually sewn on the bias. It's how Ginger Rogers achieved that "swishy" look in her dresses. She also weighted the hem but I'm not doing that for practice wear ;)

So here's the deal: I managed to loose my practice skirt. You can go back and read that again: I lost an almost floor length skirt that flared out into two full circles. How do you do that you ask? Well ... and the rest is lost in mumbling as I bow my head in shame. To punish myself I figured I'd sew my new practice skirt out of knit fabric. I just don't like wearing knits. And you're heel catches in the hem during practice: I actually managed to get mine caught in the hem of the dancer next to me ....

My pattern pieces basically looked like this:

This is the half finished skirt: It has a separate waistband, that goes almost all the way underneath my but. The teal coloured fabric is a polo knit that I - obviously - never used. It's now serving the purpose of an interfacing. I just have another 3 meters to somehow use up ... I don't know if you can see it but I'm actually in the middle of pinning my waist elastic to my "interfacing". I like to do this on the body as it provides neater results. It serves much the same purpose as waist tape for full skirts made out of heavy fabric: Holding the skirt up. Only that it isn't gravity I'm fitting against but my own (and others!) dance shoe's heels. The knit is so light weight that even centrifugal force in quick turns shouldn't be a problem without a waist elastic, but the heels just won't stop hating knit hems ...

Looks like I'll have to repin ... the seam is supposed to be further down

1. While this knit fabric actually looks quite nice (better than I'd thought knits could look anyhow) it's somewhat see-through in the wrong lights (read: bright light, read: stage light and summer sun-light) so I'll have to sew a short lining skirt. 
2. I'm going to sew in short shorts like the those Ginger Rogers had underneath her dresses. Can you tell I'm a bit obsessed with her? It's perfectly normal for Ballroom gown (both Standard and Latin-american) and probably American Smooth and Rhythm gowns to have sewn in panties. You're not even allowed to compete without them. Yep there are rules for that. They're written down here. Some countries have "extra" rules though.
3. I'm still not sure if I'll 

          a) not hem at all (less for the heels to hold on to).

          b) use horsehair braid in the hem (probably to pretty for a self punishment                skirt but a lot closer to the dresses we'll actually dance in) which is                very much in vogue in standard gowns at the moment.

You can see some examples of horsehair braid in hems here:

Isn't Joanne's skirt just beautiful? I think it's has a  very full crinoline underneath and tulle flounces with light fishing wire in the hem. Anyone want to guess the meterage?

Butterfly