SHANNON'Sdresses

Making ofBeth's dress

An old friend of mine asked if I would collaborate with her in making a dress to wear to her brother's wedding in Australia. We decided on a pattern - McCall's 5095 - and she found some awesome fabric that she fell in love with. I agree, awesome fabric, but the most difficult and confusing thing to work around in terms of matching up all the pieces because of the blocks of different colours. But with a team effort, we came out with it looking pretty awesome. I'm not sure exactly what the fabric is, but it has cream, silver, grey and navy squares in a gingham fashion, with maroon flowers embroidered over the top. This picture shows the laying out of all the pattern peices, with newspaper duplicates to help out with the double-ups

This picture shows all the pattern pieces cut out, and pinned together with the gingham pattern all matched up. We were quite proud of ourselves when we had finished.

I actually did the lining of this dress first, to make sure that it would fit without cutting up the dress fabric itself. The pattern didn't dictate a skirt lining, but I did one anyway, as it will make the inside more comfortable and hopefully help the skirt sit more nicely. In this picture you can see the strips of boning I have added to the seams on the wrong side of the fabric on top of the interfacing. To make the boning casings, I just cut about 3cm wide strips of interfacing and sew them onto the garment with two lines of stitch, so the boning can slip inbetween. I've found this is the best way to do it with boning that doesn't come with casing or it's own sewable ribbon. And it tends to leave a neat, strong-looking seam on the right side of the fabric as well. I may have a picture showing this later.

Here is the bodice sewn to the skirt, which gives a really good idea of what the dress is going to turn out looking like. See, we didn't do a bad job matching up those squares did we?

Here the lining is attached to the dress, with a line of stitching across the top of the bodice and down the edges where the zip will be, and you can see the lines of stitching on the right side of the lining that is holding the boning in on the other side. When I actually go to put the zip in I think I will unpick the lining, attach the zip to the dress fabric, and then slipstitch the lining back into place, as this will leave the neatest finish on the inside.

I didn't realise that Beth had actually bought an ivisible zip. I thought I'd be sweet with a normal zip after finally learning how to insert one properly with my blue 1930s dress, but alas, it was not to be. I have never been good at inserting invisible zips - which I learn now probably because I don't actually have an invisible zipper foot for my machine - so I had to look up instructions on the internet and see if I could do my best with what I had. It didn't turn out perfectly according to me, but Beth was happy with it. So this pic shows the zip attached, and the lining turned in and stitched in as well. All that's left to do on the dress is take up the skirt a little, attach the halter strap, and we're also going to add a little black satin strip to the top of the bodice and bottom of the skirt. I hope I get it all done in time, she leaves for the wedding in less than a week!

This pic shows how I attached the black satin trim to the top of the bodice. It is a 6cm wide strip of interfacing ironed onto a 9cm wide piece of satin, seams ironed in, folded in half and nestled over the top edge of the bodice. I sewed the strip onto the bodice on one side but left the other free as I intend to tuck the straps in first and secure them on before I handstitch the front edge of the strip on. For the bottom strip, I didn't need to do this so I simply tucked the strip over the skirt hem and secured with one line of stitching over all layers. The strap is going to be a halter neck of another 3cm strip of black satin lined with interfacing, attached to either side of the bodice, and sitting around the neck.

And this should be the last progress update - next up, we'll have some gorgeous photos of Beth at the wedding!

...Actually, there was one more photo I wanted to post - and it shows exactly how I attached the straps, if you can indeed tell from the quality of this photo. I tucked the strap in under the black strip on the wrong side of the fabric, folded it over, and stitched it into place before folding the black trim over the top of the bodice and handstitching it down. This is the last one before Beth gets her own page, I promise.