Part of me wants to apologize for not posting for FOUR whole months but I was having a busy, yet thrilling semester and doing important things. Because of that, I really only made one thing over the past few months: My youngest sister's dress for her 8th grade semiformal dance. I remember my 8th grade dance as an exciting night and a last hoorah with my fellow middle schoolers before going our separate ways for high school. This dress is, construction-wise, almost exactly like my prom dress so I was familiar and comfortable making it. Where it differs from my dress is the quality of construction. I must admit that the quality of construction of my prom dress was good enough for me then, but was lacking a little oomph. The construction of Meghan's was the best I have ever sewn so far. The fit was great as well. I didn't even use a waist stay because the bodice was so fitted that it held itself up! |
I remember at one point I was sitting on the linoleum floor(so practical!) of our sewing room, swearing under my breath, and asking myself why on earth I had decided to do this. That was during the lace layers phase of construction, which included a lot of tedious pinning and sewing and pinning and sewing etc). But it was worth all of the tediousness and pickiness because this dress came out beautiful. Meghan looked gorgeous with her coordinating hair and cute sparkly heels. Her boy's tie matched the color of the dress perfectly and they looked like a dream. Let's talk sewing for a minute: I drafted the bodice from Meghan's measurements and used the idea of my dress as the base. The bodice is fully lined and I used neat french seams which create awesome channels for the flat boning I used! Between the boning and the very fitted bodice, I did not include a waist stay but that was not detrimental to the dress's ability to stay in place. The skirt is a simple circles skirt. I used french seams in the skirt as well because I do not own a serger and wanted a nice and neat way to prevent the fabric from fraying. The most tedious part of the entire process was sewing the lace layers on to the skirt. Finally I sewed up the back seam, inserted the zipper, and tada! One completed pretty dress! Now that it is summer (AKA no homework!!) I will be able to sew A LOT more than I could during the school year so keep an eye peeled for more blog posts soon! I'm almost done with a really cute project and I'll post about it when I get back from my exciting summer road trip! |