OFW : Drafting the Wedding Dress

Hello everybody!

While I have been away I have been busy, busy, busy!!!

I sketched out 3 ideas for the gown design...

The Original

Mizrahi Spring '12 Inspired

Then a short and/or convertible version of the Original.

This will be the first pattern I have to draft and design myself, too. Every article of clothing (with very few exceptions) needs a pattern. Since this is just a sketch I will have to "block out" my dress with a generic strapless gown shape and then get crafty with a yard stick, Kraft paper, sharpies, yarn, pins and my newly-acquired pride-and-joy: my dress form!!!

Usually dress forms are around $200 and I need to set that kind of cash aside for my fabric and Muslin mock-up yardage. I had literally NO options available to me to get a dress form before Christmas to get working NAOW.

Yes, I checked craigslist. Yes, I checked teh e-bays. No dice at all there.

$75 was the best deal I could find. I'd rather invest in one that is a working dress form and is adjustable from my-size and up, instead of buying a half-solution to my problem and having another problem to deal with. I was really racking my brain until Shawn reminded me what he mentioned last year (when I was going through the would-I-have-to-make-my-dress situation): Grandpa has one in his basement. Grandma bought it before she left Earth to make dresses with and never got to use it.

HOWWWW did I forget that?!

In any case... it was there. And it's not perfectly sized but it was perfectly free. And that covers up a lot of size issues. It can still be used to pin, draft and drape! So it will work.

It is now living in my office tingling with purpose.

AHHHH! I am SO excited now! NOTHING is standing in my way! Plus I just had a huge ego-boost: I can make my dress pattern WITH MATH!

The A-Line Ballgown Skirt is really a simple cone. To find the surface area of the skirt would be as good as knowing how many yards my pattern will take to complete the skirt before it is even made. I just have to divide my computing units into meters and take care to note they are in SQUARE INCHES. Failure to take note of that could increase my cost and leftover fabric approximately enough to piss me off for a whole day. So I took note.

As I block it out I will take pictures and post the progress of each step! I'm sorry if I'm not as fast movign as I'd like to be but it is the holiday season and I DIY a lot of my gifts for people! My hands will either be crocheting, blogging or pinning!

Just keep hanging in there with me!