In recent garment construction sessions, I have been looking at creating the toile of my final chosen white-on-white design.
The dress I am making is a very fitted, elegant mermaid style with a center front pleated godet, draped sleeves and a detachable mini bustle skirt.
Textile techniques that I'm going to include are honeycomb pin-tucks, use of the embellisher to collage fabrics, fabric origami bow, fabric origami squares and fabric flowers. I am also stitching in embellishments such as pearls and beading.
I really love how my toile is looking so far and can't wait to see how it looks with all my techniques once completed.
To create the bodice and skirt patter (with waist seam), I ended up pinning my pattern to the mannequin and creating it that way since I wanted it to be more fitted to the body. I also took measurements around my legs e.g. the bottom of my thighs in order to then taper-in the pattern for a real fitted and flared exaggerated mermaid look.
When creating the draped sleeves, I originally intended on sewing them at the center front and pleating round to join at the top of the back bodice, however, I found that adding in a shoulder strap allowed me to sew the sleeve in higher at the back which, subsequently allowed for more ease of arm moment.
The pleated godet was quite tricky to sew since the pleats started so small and so high up, however top stitching helped to keep everything in place, and I think the effect created by the pleats is really beautiful and add so much more volume and dimension to the skirt.
For the mini bustle skirt, I started to cut-up scraps of white fabric into squares and strips that I would then layer up attach into the detachable waistband - I think this works really effectively in-line with my character as I have been able to utilize really delicate, embroidered and patterned fabrics but add a twist to them by fraying and layering, which really echoes the two facades of my character - the 'prim and proper' side versus her corrupting mental state underneath it all.
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