I will take us through the initial patterning in this post, and reserve the mockups and fittings for each of the garment blog posts to follow. This part became a bit tougher to document as the design began to change and evolve right around this stage. I was simultaneously working on multiple parts of this project at once, and each decision I made on one part of the garment directly affected others. Throughout this mockup phase, I’ve learned that I can google all I want, but at the end of the day, no one has done anything exactly like this with the exact same fabric. My time was much better spent experimenting and making mockups to test my ideas.
Let’s talk about all the considerations that went into this initial design. The style lines for both the top-skirt set and the overlay dress are the same, so I decided early on that I’ll use the same patterns but slightly different seam allowances such that the dress won’t pucker with the layers on top of each other. This really simplifies the amount of patterning work I have to do.
Ready? Let’s jump into the patterning process!
Top
I’m not gonna lie, as soon as I was done with the design sketch, I was so excited to get started that I reversed the proper sewing steps. Instead of making the foundation corselette and building the dress from there, I began with draping top. I’ve been itching to practice draping ever since I took a draping class from Project Patterns. I won’t go into the details of draping as there are a few resources of draping basics on the internet. It was so fun to play as a fashion designer on the dress form. I used ribbons instead of style tape to mark my style lines and carefully draped scrap pieces of muslin to form a top with princess seams. The resulting pattern was actually not terrible even though the bust on my dress form was slightly larger than mine. I think there might be more draping in my future!
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Draping style lines on my dress form
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Back style lines on my dress form
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Skirt
For the skirt, I had a trusty skirt sloper that I was excited to use. After ensuring the skirt darts are matching the top princess seam, I used my flat-patterning skills to make a 7-panel mermaid skirt. Considering how short I am and where the widest part of my hips are in proportion to the rest of my body, I decided to make the flare of the dress slightly above my knees. This also helps with mobility in walking, which is a major concern I had after I shimmied around the bridal salon in a mermaid dress. The last step is to add the train. I placed the measuring tape from my waist to the ground to get an estimated train length, and free-handed the skirt hem. I tried to tape the paper patterns together and pin it on the mannequin to assess if I need any adjustments. However, I decided that paper drapes terribly and that I could not skip making a mockup for this very high stakes project.
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Draping the paper pattern on my dress form
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Assessing the paper train on my dress form
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Before I end this very short post, I do have a secret to share: I originally designed the base dress to be one piece and have debated for a long time if I wanted a more traditional couture gown with a corselette attached or separated into two pieces like the everyday clothing. I mean, look at this beautiful inside from one of my mockups! In the end, I decided the ability to re-wear some components of this set was more important, so I went with separates.
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Beautiful guts for my mock up dress
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Next, we’ll dig into fitting the top mockups and design changes.
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