Gold, white and blue

Sometime towards the end of 2010 I was doodling in a lecture and came up with an outfit design. When I got home I drew up the design properly:

I don’t think I planned to take it any further – I have folders full of dress designs I have no intention of making. But later I decided to drape a pattern for it because I hadn’t done any draping and I wanted some experience. It turned out very well, but I still didn’t plan to do anything with it.

Shortly afterwards I found the perfect fabric for the appliqués and realised I had the perfect white already in the stash. This persuaded me to make it. I made some progress but then put the project on hold because I got my hair dyed blue and I didn’t want to cover my white fabric in blue fingerprints.

To make the appliqués I ironed a large section of visoflex to the back of the brocade fabric, then cut my shapes out. For the large gold pieces I began with a basic shape cut from paper which I placed on the material – I did not cut along the smooth top edge but created an uneven edge by following lines on the brocade. For the small pieces I cut shapes from the patterns on the brocade. I cut out a lot of shapes to start with and placed them later. I tried to avoid anything that looked too much like a flower.

The semi-detached sleeves are made from a normal sleeve pattern with the top arc cut off.

The front pieces are faced to strengthen the fabric where the snaps are. Three of the straps are sewn on and one clips on.

The whole thing is bound with gold bias – thereby avoiding the problem of awkward-to-hem shapes. 

 I also made an ear cuff which complements the outfit (based on this tutorial):