Miss Smartie's Sewing: Past projects part 3: the dinosaur dress

I picked up this cute and amazing fabric over a year ago on the fabric fair. It features cute dinosaurs in all colours and shapes. Soon after arriving home I realised that the pattern I planned doing in it would not do at all. It had lots of pleats and I loved the fabric to much to let that happen. Since I originally planed to do a sheath dress in this I didn't purchase a lot of fabric.

Butterick 5603 pattern illustration

I went looking for a pattern with big panels wherethe small and very busy print wouldn't be overcrowding and I would be able to make the dinosaurs shine. After surfing the Internet, my eye fell on Butterick 5603. A pattern I've seen incarnated a lot both in stylishly retro fashion and with awesome novelty prints. It were these projects that convinced me because the butterick version looks slightly horrendous. I realised I needed that pattern. Now!! So I bought it as my first PDF printable pattern, since I did not know where I would be able to pick up Butterick patterns here in Belgium.

That turned out to be a mistake. I found the printing facilities a bit weird. (you only get to print it 3 times ever in the same year you purchased it) this got me all worked up and worried since I tried to print it on my laptop, realised I had selected the wrong printer and ended up almost immediately ruining the times I could print. Eventually it worked, and I might just purchase a pattern like that again if I'm really in a hurry.

Taping up all of the pattern pieces isn't that difficult, but it takes some extra time. I'm pretty conflicted about printed patterns since they are usually on normal (stiff) paper. this makes them more durable, but can be anoying when you want to store (the original) pattern pieces away. I spend all of my allotted sewing time preparing the pattern and lost interest in it for a whole while, due to school and real live stuff.

After being on my to do list for more than a year I decided to start work on the dress again. In the middle of my exams, witch is usually the time when I get all sewing obsessed and start watching you tube technique videos. I started doodling design options for the dress. I quickly worked out that I did not want to make the dress plainly as it was, and I feared I didn't have enough of the Dino fabric to make a full skirt as it was anyway. (The first pattern I planned on making had a pencil skirt.)

I put together some of my stash fabrics with the Dino fabric and really liked how a bright green went with the Dino's. I paired this with a slightly stretchy black I had lying around for ages. I thought that it would look good to have some design accents in green and maybe some panels in black because the dress would otherwise look to crowded. I decided I wanted black side panels and I wanted them to continue into the bodice of the dress. The only problem was that the dress there are only six panels in the original dress and the bodice is made up out of one piece. I daringly set out to make my first design related pattern adjustments on an existing pattern.

I ended up drawing my own wide dramatic collar and added a wide strip of green to the hem of the dress to balance this out. I split up the side panels into halves at the darts in the front and the same distance in the back. One part would be black the other Dino! I had to redraw the font and back bodice pieces. The back was pretty easy. I just marked the line I wanted and cut it off. I then added seam allowance and notches. The front was a little bit more difficult. I had decided on a princess seam and if possible I wanted to eliminate the front bodice gathers, so they would not disturb my dinosaurs. I drew the design line I wanted and then added 2 cm extra ease to the curve in the side. This made shure the dress would curve nicely. I walked the distance of the seam multiple times to make sure the fit would be correct. It all turned out pretty well, but I think I overdid the ease since the bodice fits a bit loosley.

I did do a muslin for this project, but nothing much surprising happened so I happily started sewing. The design lines didn't allign perfectly, but I thought I would be able to fix that later on in the real thing. A dangerous assumption.

While constructing the garment I realised the dino fabric was to sheer and would be see through. I added the green fabric as interfacing. this looked awesome and neat on the table, but the combined stiffness of these fabrics really made my dress a tad wild and poofy.

I used (my first) french seams on the seams in the skirt and lined the bodice. I added some bias band to the hem, but this added even more stiffness and made the dress look a bit weird. after wearing it a wile it the skirt usually settles down a bit so I decided to leave it as it was.

I love the inside of the dress.
Those polkadots and french seams always make me smile.

It was also my first time trying to match up a novelty fabric. I read about it on the Internet and decided to try to match the horizontal seams. I apparently did something wrong there, I think I didn't take the seam allowance of the seams on the sides into account. the dress ended up looking good, so I didn't really mind. Didn't have enough fabric for a second try either.

The most difficult part of the construction was the matching up of the horizontal seam between bodice and skirt. I ended up shifting the fabric around quite a bit. I had to take in some fabric in the black part of the dress, witch was unfortunate because it nearly eliminated all of the wearing ease I needed there, but fortunate since the black fabric turned out to be stretchy enough to accommodate movement and even a lot of eating.

In the end I'm really proud of this dress. I learnt tons of new techniques like french seams and tried out others like matching novelty fabrics at the seams. I used my first printable pattern and my first pattern with seam allowance included. (I can tell you what a revelation!!). I feel like I've learnt ton's (also first time to use interfacing, and invisible zip, purchased bias band) and I cannot wait to learn more.

I went to the (Antwerp) Zoo yesterday and my boyfriend took these absolutly adorable pictures. Thank you so much!

Labels: dresses, past projects, pattern drafting, Pattern review, vintage

Past projects part 3: the dinosaur dress

Miss Smartie's Sewing

Friday 4 April 2014

Past projects part 3: the dinosaur dress

1 Comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Previous Posts