Actually, I was not planning on making this dress at all but while working with previous two dresses, it just happened that I saw a black short-sleeved chiffon blouse in my closet that I hardly wear (bought in Hong Kong some time in 2011) and thought that since my sister had some black chiffon remnants idling in her collection, perhaps I could make another black dress.
I imagined a blouse that will look like it is paired with a long skirt but in fact, it is actually a one-piece dress.
All I needed to do was attach a pair of long sleeves and a long skirt to the existing blouse. Sounds simple, no?
But it took me a few days just to come up with a design before I finally had the nerve to cut out fabric for the new dress.
The whole time was spent visualising, draping pieces of remnants on my model (the mannequin my sister lent me), just to make sure that I have picked the right remnant pieces to avoid wastage.
And once I was satisfied with the look, I went ahead with drafting and then cutting out fabric for the skirt.
I was working like a mad woman because it turned out I had loads of fabric to sew and they never seemed to finish ~ cutting, sergering, joining, tacking, sewing, gathering ~ repetitively.
It was tiring, no doubt, but satisfying once the dress took the shape that I imagined.
It's all because I did not want just a plain and simple long dress. I wanted a more elaborate design to match the existing blouse. I must have ruffles for this new dress!
After I finished with the skirt, I had a fitting but did not like the outcome of the new dress because the blouse still looked incomplete.
So, I decided to add ruffles at the hem of the blouse so that it would blend in with the skirt. And so it did!
Afterwards, it was time to think of a design for the sleeves. And this took me another few days.
I maintained the same vertically-stripey concept as previous projects but this time, I opted for peasant sleeves instead.
To narrow the sleeves a little, I added thin pleats from the top to the middle of the sleeves to match the details on the blouse, and ruffles at the bottom of the sleeves to match the details on the skirt.
It took me slightly over two weeks to finish this dress because I had to redo some stitching ~ I fixed a certain fabric inside-out, certain details did not match, one of the elastic bands for the sleeves got twisted after I secured the ends, etc.. hmmm there's no drama like that of a drama queen making a dress.
Regardless of the drama, all ended well, as always. And I cannot wait to wear this dress to a formal outing.
Although it looks heavy, this dress is actually lightweight and flowy ~ I like!
Who could tell that this was a cut-and-paste project, if I had not disclosed the facts?
I can proudly say that you cannot find this item anywhere. 💃🐒👌🙋
