Wednesday, April 22, 2015

The reveal

Awhile back, Jess decided it would be fun to have a dress made out of her new Time Warp fabric. She searched for patterns online, and in the meantime, I searched through my "vintage" patterns to see if there were any she might like. Here are a couple of mine that I sent her photos of, and she loved them!



Since I'd made dresses for myself from these patterns many, many, many years ago, I knew something about the fit in relation to their size charts, so I hoped I could get a reasonable fit for Jess from one of them.

Jess created a couple of mock-ups of dresses she thought would be cute, and if you happen to be followers of her Facebook page, you probably saw them.


Since one pattern had a sleeveless dress and the other had the pocket flaps and a collar of sorts, I combined the two. If you noticed, the patterns are two different sizes. Jess mailed me a couple of her dresses that fit well, so I compared them with the patterns to determine which one would work best. I used the smaller one, but fortunately I was able to use the sleeve facing from the larger one, as it fit the smaller armhole perfectly. (Apparently armhole sizes don't change much from one size to the next.)

Since neither pattern had a Peter Pan collar, which was Jess's favorite of the two designs, I just googled for a tutorial, and I ended up making my own pattern, which was pretty simple.

So that's how it all came together, and here, finally, is the result!



Jess was quite impressed that I even matched the print underneath the flaps. (Shhh... don't tell her, but I didn't actually plan that. Nice how it worked out, though, although I doubt she'll go around lifting the flaps for everyone to see! Ha!)


Of course you know how kids like to act silly when doing a photo shoot. My kid did, too:


Really, though, it was the photographer(hubby Alex)'s fault... he told her to act like a tiger for some reason. :) Scary, isn't she?!

You can click on the photos to enlarge them. And be sure to notice the coordinated orange bits on the shoes!

So, there... it's DONE! And it fits! *BIG HAPPY SIGH*

13 comments:

Larissa Holland said...

absotively posilutely FABULOUS. I just cannot believe you achieved such a perfect fit long distance. I can't sew clothes to fit my own body, much less someone far away.

Jenny said...

You did a beautiful job! I love the pattern matching (intentional or not) on the pocket flaps and the orange piping is perfect.

Kudos for making your own pattern for the collar. I'm not sure I would have been brave enough to try that on clothing, even though I have created my own patterns for tote bags and things. But then, I don't really sew clothing beyond Halloween costumes for my boys.

Jenny

Grandma G said...

Thanks, ladies!

Actually, Larissa, I can't believe it, either!!

Jenny, the flap matching 'was' intentional for the top of the flap. The bottom just followed suit because of the way the fabric was laid out on the fold. The collar was not all that hard because I used the neck facing piece as a base and then just modified it.

Geneviève said...

Amazing work! And I really love the collar :) I think it is worth the effort, it changes the dress so much! (in the best way possible :)

Grandma G said...

Thank you, Geneviève! I agree that the collar does a lot for the dress. It's actually the second collar I made. The first was a detachable one, and we didn't like it much. The fabric didn't work well, plus it didn't lay quite right. This one is much better. So this dress was a bit more work than it should've been, but it was a good learning experience! :)

Emily said...

Love the dress! The pop of orange is perfect!

Grandma G said...

Thanks, Emily! :)

Anonymous said...

AWESOME!!!

Kristin

Grandma G said...

Thanks, Kristin! :)

Berrie said...

So neat and perfect !

Grandma G said...

Thank you, Berrie! :)

annie dee said...

OMG! OMG! This is beautiful! I do not believe that pockets match by accident. I prefer to believe that as usual you had that planned out. Love the choice of pattern and of course, love love love the beautiful fabric. This is a definite WOWZA!!

Grandma G said...

Thank you!! I had planned for the pocket print to align on the outside, of course. It's under the flap that 'just happened'. Then again, it happened because I had the prints matched up on the double layer of fabric that I cut them from, if you get what I mean. So the flaps are the same, top and bottom... so of course they lined up underneath, too. There, my secret's out. Leave it to you... ;)