So for my first comeback post, what better than a truly Spring-like dress than the Melon Yellow and a flurry of petticoats to celebrate my comeback.
Since becoming more interested in vintage fashion whilst reading some awesome blogs last year, I decided to have a go at creating my own patterns to make my own vintage style clothes. Armed with the trusty Metric Pattern Cutting by Winifred Aldrich I set about making some blocks for my reasonably petite frame. - Ahhh, that's why I haven't been blogging, I've been fiddling with paper, a cutting board, a French curve and a lot of pins!
This fab fabric is from my usual emporium of all novelty fabric Fabric Land Brighton. The bodice of the dress is a simple sleeveless fitted dress block which I gave myself the challenge of scalloping at the neckline - a time consuming and fiddly detail. I actually missed a small dart in the back neck so the bodice gapes slightly - note to self - remember all darts!
The skirt is a full circle skirt which gives it a feminine 50s vibe .
So if you want to make a circle skirt here's the workings out, It only took me one lunch hour!
Use your waist measurement as the circumference. So tp find the radius we need to go back to math lessons and find divide the circumference by 2 Pi (Pi being 3.14), this gave me 6.28, and that divided into 29 gave me 4.6 as the radius. (P.S. my workings out are in inches as I don't have a 29cm waist).
I added extra inches in so I could gather the skirt to give ir more fullness and made the radius 7".
Once i'd got that measurement i added in from the edge of it the length i wanted the skirt to be ( in this case 24") and then drew in the circular shape to match the radius. From that i was able to calculate how much fabric i needed for the skirt and just to confuse you, I worked it out at 3 metres. The extra metre was, of course, for the bodice.
Maths lesson over, here's another pic of the finished dress.
Even more fun, here's what the dress was made for - a twirl on the dance floor (excuse my very strange expression - i was concentrating on my moves!)
So there you go, they reasons why I neglected my blog - I've been self-drafting and learning to jive.
Give either, or the two of them, a go - they're both fun!
Ease of sewing: Bodice not so easy with the first draft but once you get this boxed off you can create all sorts of bodices. The skirt, much easier as it's a full circle skirt so if you're good at maths shoudl be a doddle.
Need: This dress takes 3.5 metres of 110cm wide fabric plus half a metre for the bodice and a long length zip.
Go on, dance the night away
Happy sewing
Linda x
