Ballroom dress- the work begins

So up until this point everything was pretty much the fun, happy, glowing stage of a new project where you're planning everything and super excited and it's all you can think about. Today, the work started. I sat down tonight with a mission: to get a leotard pattern on paper. I decided that I wanted to do a leotard with a little bit of a boyshort to it, it covers my bum better and is less likely to cut into my thighs/hips and ride up. I couldn't find any patterns that I liked (that weren't $40, and let's face it, I'm cheap.) So I started to draft a pattern. I've never really made a sewing pattern before. Whenever I knit I always made my own patterns and I read a lot of books on pattern/dressmaking and researched what leotard patterns typically look like. The good thing is, it's supposed to be stretchy and tight, so it should be a little forgiving... right? Let's hope so.

So I spent about an hour and a half measuring myself, measuring paper, sketching on paper, measuring sketches, measuring self again, making adjustments etc etc etc. So I came up with this:

Yay! Paper pieces! And the piece in the middle is intentional, I will explain

The piece on the left is the back/side (there will be two of these sewn together in the back and they will wrap around my sides.) The piece on the right is the center/front (fold on the fabric goes on the dotted line to make one piece twice as wide.) And the liiiittle piece in the center is the crotch. This is by no means a finished pattern, it's a draft that should work in theory, it needs to be tested in practice now.

So this weekend I am going away to IL for my uncle's wedding and I won't be able to actually do any sewing tonight (it's 1 am and I'm so tired just from making this stupid pattern) so I'll get to that next week, hopefully Tuesday. The plan is to make a mock up in some stretch knit white fabric that I have lying around (I'm really not even sure what it's made of, maybe a cotton/polyester blend) so that I can get an idea of if my pattern is working at all before cutting into the good stuff.

Speaking of which, I ordered all my fabric and after a whole little mix up, it came! It is super exciting, here is a sneak peek:

It's like the greenest green ever!

Corset Project

Since I don't have my dress form yet and the Maryland Renn Faire is coming up soon, I'm going to be working on a corset! I'll be doing it in a lovely black and silver brocade, but first I have to work up a mock up in some scrap fabric. Here are the cut out pattern pieces:

Now to pin and baste them together for fitting!

I worked up the draft corset and it was way too big! With 5 plus inches of excess I had to take in a lot of seams.

Here's how it looked after all that:

I'll have to chop it down to make it into a new pattern for cutting the final from it. That will have to be another day though because it's 1:40 AM.

Goodnight!

Ballroom Costume- The Beginning

My original purpose in creating this blog was to provide a forum on which to talk about the process as I attempt to make a ballroom dance costume from scratch. If you've never seen Dancing with the Stars or any other ballroom events, you probably have no idea what it is I am getting myself into. Here are some pictures of ballroom dresses to demonstrate:



These are just some typical examples, they can vary widely in color, style, and materials. I've been very excited about making this dress for quite a while as some of my dancer friends know as they have been hearing about it for some time. After many weeks of time spent searching online for dresses for inspiration, patterns, and any other helpful information I could glean, I have finally settled on a design.

After coming across this:
 
design, I knew it was what I wanted.

I want to say now that I am not an experienced seamstress. I've sewn a number of small things, pillows, stuffed animals, some clothes, but nothing on this scale. Everything I have made either came with a clear cut pattern or was simple enough not to need one. Not so for this dress. I will be making the pattern from scratch,  doing my best to interpret the dress. I don't intend to make this exact dress, I don't think it would turn out exactly like that anyway, but I used it for inspiration. My dress will (hopefully, and a big emphasis on that) be something like this:

those are rhinestones rather than sequins like in the gold dress

I haven't decided what to do about floats yet, but those are a ways off.

The first step will be to make a mock up of the base pattern in some cheap muslin so that I can adjust it for fit and shape before using the good stuff (well, before I buy the good stuff even, I need to know how much I will need.) Unfortunately, to do that I need a dress form which I don't have at the moment. I'm going to be making my own using plaster just as soon as the plaster cloth arrives in mail, hopefully it will be soon!