Although this dress is pretty humble with it's cotton gingham and school girl type of attitude, this is one of the projects that I am most proud of. Honestly, almost all of the work that I poured into this dress is completely invisible. The majority of the time that I spent on this dress was spent hand sewing so that the finish of the dress was as impeccable as possible. I love the tiny details that hand sewing allows, and I was able to do a lot of the work outside in the spring sunshine!
This dress is made from the very same pattern as my silk 1950's cocktail dress. I loved the shape and fit of the dress so much that I knew I would have to make a day version. Although my dream would be to make this out of wool one day, that would be way to expensive for my current budget so I pulled out this cotton twill that has been in my stash for a few years now. This is a pretty thick fabric with a tiny bit of stretch to it, so it was not difficult to sew with but it is very heavy! This style has all-in-one short sleeves, finished with self-made bias tape, a crew neckline with a back keyhole, a high waistline (right underneath the bust), a side zipper, and a very full skirt.
I started by putting together the skirt (which is compiled of 20 shaped panels) and completely finishing all of those seams by hand felling them down. The type of felling that I used for this involves sewing together the panels like usual (good sides of the fabric together), then ironing both seam allowances down to the same side. The seam allowance that ends up underneath gets trimmed down by about half of the width, and the top seam allowance gets folded over and under to hide all of the raw edges. I then sewed that down with a whip stitch. Each skirt seam took about 45 minutes to finish, meaning that I took around 15 hours to flat fell the skirt seams alone (mostly done while watching movies in the evenings, or during lecture classes between taking notes). Once the skirt, other than one side seam, was complete, I put together the bodice and sewed it to the skirt. It had the same treatment to ensure that all of the raw edges were finished. From there, all I had to do was put in the zipper, finish the neckline and sleeves with self made bias tape, and hem it. I also hand stitched on some cotton eyelet lace around the hem, which took about 7 or 8 hours to do (this skirt is truly massive, which makes it even more fun to twirl in!).
Overall, this dress was actually a really huge undertaking due to all of the hand sewing that I used on it. Overall, it probably took me about 45 hours. This might not seem like a lot of time to spend on a project, but I was working on this while also taking final exams for classes and working at my job as well as volunteering, so the time got spread out over almost 2 months. This is one of the reasons that I don't usually make custom dresses, since it is really important to me to take the time to finish everything properly and to ensure that the dress truly is timeless and will last as long as possible. Plus, this method of sewing has the added benefit of full satisfaction every time that I take it out of my closet. I know that I did the best that I could to make the inside just as beautiful as the outside, and it fits me exactly how I wanted it to.
Thank you so much for reading!
~Katherine
