Formal lace dress
Hi lovelies!!! I am back, hopefully with a bang. I will spare you the chit chat and jump straight in. I recently embarked on a journey of fixing my wardrobe after not sewing pieces for myself in a while. There is a deep hole in my closet and most of what I have been wearing needs a desperate break. In a bid to get myself some formal wear and church appropriate garments I started with this pink rose lace dress. I am in love! It shows off my clavicles perfectly, probably one of the only things I have going for me, haaaaa....and teeth.
The dress is McCall's pattern M7719 in the off the shoulder bodice and straight skirt. I really liked this view of the pattern and the model really sold it to me. Certainly the usability of the pattern with the other views was an added bonus. I made the dress up in a heavy corded lace with a satin crepe base fabric. The materials came together and worked perfectly!
I did not line the dress as the two layers were already so thick. I would sweat like crazy in the tropics had I lined the dress. I finished most of the raw edges by covering with grosgrain ribbon. Definitely a new favourite method of mine after it was so successful with this project. There were only a few alterations. I raised the armhole about half an inch because it looked so low on the version on the model. I also had to chunk out a huge section in the back seam of the uppermost piece of the dress pattern, about 1 1/2 inches on each side and graded. I usually always have to make these alterations using patterns because I have a narrow back.
My biggest concern with this dress is that the shoulders of the dress would eventually slide down while wearing it as I am an A cup and so there would be nothing to hold it up. I wanted it to always remain upright and I did not want to feel like I needed to be tugging at the dress while wearing it. To alleviate my fears I decided to add boning throughout the bodice that radiates all the way to the shoulder wrapping section of the dress. It worked perfectly! I just had to make sure they were the right lengths so as to not stick out awkwardly at the top seam. From the pictures you can see that the boning is covered by sandwiching in grosgrain ribbon. You may also notice that the boning is free floating and is only attached at the waistline and at the seam connecting the bodice to the off the shoulders piece. This technique is certainly useful to prevent the appearance of boning lines in the garment, especially if not lined and it gives a gentle form of structure to the garment.
So that's it lovelies. Feel free to message me if you want more information on the boning process within the dress and anything else. Thanks for stopping by! Blessing to you always.
The dress is McCall's pattern M7719 in the off the shoulder bodice and straight skirt. I really liked this view of the pattern and the model really sold it to me. Certainly the usability of the pattern with the other views was an added bonus. I made the dress up in a heavy corded lace with a satin crepe base fabric. The materials came together and worked perfectly!
I did not line the dress as the two layers were already so thick. I would sweat like crazy in the tropics had I lined the dress. I finished most of the raw edges by covering with grosgrain ribbon. Definitely a new favourite method of mine after it was so successful with this project. There were only a few alterations. I raised the armhole about half an inch because it looked so low on the version on the model. I also had to chunk out a huge section in the back seam of the uppermost piece of the dress pattern, about 1 1/2 inches on each side and graded. I usually always have to make these alterations using patterns because I have a narrow back.
My biggest concern with this dress is that the shoulders of the dress would eventually slide down while wearing it as I am an A cup and so there would be nothing to hold it up. I wanted it to always remain upright and I did not want to feel like I needed to be tugging at the dress while wearing it. To alleviate my fears I decided to add boning throughout the bodice that radiates all the way to the shoulder wrapping section of the dress. It worked perfectly! I just had to make sure they were the right lengths so as to not stick out awkwardly at the top seam. From the pictures you can see that the boning is covered by sandwiching in grosgrain ribbon. You may also notice that the boning is free floating and is only attached at the waistline and at the seam connecting the bodice to the off the shoulders piece. This technique is certainly useful to prevent the appearance of boning lines in the garment, especially if not lined and it gives a gentle form of structure to the garment.
So that's it lovelies. Feel free to message me if you want more information on the boning process within the dress and anything else. Thanks for stopping by! Blessing to you always.
I think this dress came out beautifully and so flattering!
ReplyDeleteLove your dress! And the boning idea is genius!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much :) I like that we can do creative things sometimes to make things work.....but it doesn't always work out as successfully as this.
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