Creative Design Realisation

Dress Evaluation
I was asked to find a dress from either a magazine or from the internet that indicated fullness and flair, then create the pattern using a basic bodice block that we had previously produced.
I found several images that I thought were appropriate, but in the end I decided to go for the simplest design, without sleeves as I felt I need to allocate enough time to create a quality garment.
Creating the pattern;
I quite enjoyed actually drawing and creating the pattern, as it allowed me to put together all the things that I had learnt in the previous three sessions, and really understand how they connect together.
I had to create new darts for my dress, as they were in a different place on my dress than on a standard bodice. I actually lost the top dart from my dress as the sleeve curved in before the dart happened, so I just ended closing the original dart and I moved it all into the bottom dart.
I needed to make the basic bodice a lot shorter, as this is what it was like in my picture. I had to still keep the shape of the bodice, but make it so it fitted around the bust area. At this point was my first point of confusion, because I had to move the base line of the front piece round to the side the same amount as I had moved the length up. This was really hard for me to understand, but after seeing how it fitted to the back piece it started to become clearer.
There are two layers to my dress, which are gathered at the top and one of the layers is shorter than the other. I learnt how to create fullness on a skirt now, which will be a really useful skill to have, as I will be able to do this without help but also use it in my designing.
Once I had created my pattern, I cut it out and pinned it to the calico fabric and then cut this out.
I have learnt now that when notching the darts onto the pattern pieces, do not make them too big as it makes it more difficult when it comes to sewing the darts as the fabric is harder to line up, because you are trying to match up fabric that isn’t there because it is cut away.
Making the gathers for my skirt layers also proved quite difficult, when I was pulling the thread to create the gathers, I kept snapping the thread meaning I had to keep unpicking and re-sewing. After a few attempts I finally managed to gather the skirts. Once I had done this I realised that I didn’t think that I had made the skirt panels wide enough to create as much gather as I would have liked. I don’t think working in calico helped, as the fabric is too stiff for it o flow so it crunched up quite a lot. There wasn’t really anything that I could do about this because this was the fabric that I had been allocated and had to use.
There were only two other things that I found a bit difficult when I was making my garment, the zip and the facings. I had never really done these things before so that is why I found it quite hard to understand how to do them, but after being shown for the first time, I was a little more confident doing it myself.
The facings around the strap area, I did get quite frustrated, I found it really difficult not to catch the underneath fabric into the seam. I had to do this several times before managing to get it together.
I did make one quite large mistake which unfortunately I could not rectify. My dress has two layers for the skirt, one of which is fuller than the other and more gathered, the fuller layer was supposed to be the top layer so the dress could spread and flow. Unfortunately I sew the layers on in the incorrect order and I had already overlocked the seam before I had realised this, and by this time it was too late to unpick the layers as it would have destroyed the fabric.
I had to improvise after I had done this. I cut the top layer so that it became shorter than the underneath, so this made it still partially like the starting design. The dress seemed quite long before, so cutting the layer shorter did not really seem like an issue.
The overall design of my dress turned out a bit different from the original design in the picture, and the shape of the garment looks a bit square where the skirt layers are sewn on the wrong way around, but otherwise I feel that it was fairly successful that I actually managed to create a garment like this.
If I was to make the dress again in the future, I would use a lighter, more fluid and more appropriate material, so that the skirt drapes better and creates a better shape. I would also like to make the skirt more gathered so it creates more shape and flow.
If I was to use a colour scheme, I think I would use patterned material, in two contrasting colours, maybe a vivid blue and white. I would use patterned fabric to create different effects where the material moved. I would also make the dress shorter as I feel that the dress I have made is still too long.
The project took me three sessions to make, which I impressed myself with getting it all finished.
If I was to manufacture my garment, it would be quite easy to set up a production line, as there is nothing to difficult or intricate that needs to be done, I believe that the techniques that I used to make my dress were adequate and have securely held the dress together, however if producing for manufacture all of my seams would have been neatened with overlocking and pressed and hung to give the best shape.
I am pleased with what I have achieved, It has now given me the confidence to sew more technical garments, so hopefully this will allow me to design a wider range of garments and help mw to be more experimental.