Dress 1 - Almost done!

We made some great progress this weekend! We're working with 2 Colette patterns, making 'practice' dresses out of each of them, comparing and tweaking the designs/lengths/fit... and then picking the winner for the real deal. I love Colette because they're gorgeous vintage-style dresses with some funk, room for creativity, and such tailored fits. She really makes beautiful patterns!
Dress 1 is Eclair, a strapless little cutie with a big sash that goes from the front side waist. The bodice is pieced together with 6 panels, meaning great tailored fit. Especially with Courtney's careful sewing!
She put the bodice together, we fit it to me and realized we could probably cut the bodice about 2 sizes smaller! But with the seams re-done, it was perfect. Then Courtney put the skirt together. Last up is putting them together, which is on tap for the next few weeks. The question with this dress is whether we would need to boning in the bodice. We'll see how strong it is with the lining once it's all done.

Next is up is Dress 2, i.e. Chantilly. I have to say, I'm a little enamored with Chantilly, mainly because it just has such a classic style and looks so flattering and comfortable. While Courtney was sewing away, I pressed the main and lining fabric for the practice dress, cut the pattern pieces and the main fabric pieces. This time, we cut the bodice smaller, so everything is to measurement on this one. It should work out since the pieces are joined by gathers at the midsection.
Once we have both practice dresses done (which I can't wait to wear!), it really comes down to fit and comfort. We'll try to imagine each dress in a calf or floor length (maybe?), in a creamy billowy fabric, dancing around at a bbq joint in NYC...

Meet Bea

(Hi. I'm Beatrice. Bea for short.)

Bea is my body double, or more technically, my dress form! It's pretty cool having a body double. At least the trunk of one. Courtney will use her for fittings since we live 2 hours apart. Then after the wedding, I'll get Bea for my own sewing fun!

Court will give more details on the process and getting the right fit. But long story short, it took about 1 1/2 hours, involved a trash bag and 1 grocery bag, a roll of paper tape, a bowl of water, and keeping the cats away. Speaking of the cats. They reeeallly liked Bea.

So it was a productive weekend. We finished the dress form and took every measurement you can imagine. We looked at fabrics to get an idea of what kind of cream color we'll want. Who knew there were so many different kinds of creams!

JoMar served us well, and we found lots of goodies. At $1-$2/yd, it was a steal. We also picked up some fabrics for Court to start work on the two Collette patterns, now that she has Bea. We got a blue lightweight shirting for the sleeveless eclair dress, and cute green and brown floral for the chantilly. These will be practice runs to check out the fitting and shape of these dressees, see if either of them will work before we add length and details. That chantilly dress looks oh so much like the vintage ebay dress from the previous post, that I LOVE. Looking forward to see how that comes out... In the meantime, Courtney is taking care of Bea, and I will miss our special bond...

Measurements, Dress Forms and Patterns

There are few beginning steps we’ll be doing before we start dreaming about fabric and the final dress. We’ll start with measurements, dress forms and patterns:

Measurements:
Taking all of Bex' measurements is key to the fit of the dress. Label-Free has a great illustration they shared last year that talks about some of the things to measure.

Dress Forms:
A great video was featured on the BurdaStyle website about how dress forms are made. The Science Channel produced the video, which you can view here.
This is great, but custom dress forms are expensive! So Bex and I are planning to put together a Duct Tape Dress form. Spoonflower recently posted a great YouTube video that shows the process of putting one together.
I haven’t gone in depth on this post and podcast yet, but it’s on my list to read: http://sewforthnow.blogspot.com/2008/05/episode-28-dress-forms.html
Here’s a great example of a finished duct tape dress form.
There are more great resources out there- here’s the results of a Google Blog search that I’ve barely scratched the surface of!

Patterns:
One of the ideas Bex has is to copy a dress she already has, one with a sweet history (that I will let her share if she wants to). So that means copying something that is Ready To Wear (RTW). We know we don't want to take the dress apart, so when I read this great post on The Princess Seam about copying RTW knew it was a definite possibility. If we want to keep looking (which we will do either way- who doesn’t like to window shop?!), sites like Craftster, Burda Style, Pattern Review and big box stores like Jo-Ann’s will help us to narrow down our ideas about the final dress, too.

I know that Bex has some great tear sheets and ideas she's been gathering. Can't wait to see what she's been dreaming of!