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!