Prom Dress (Finally!)

Oh my goodness. Well, here we are approaching 2 months since Prom happened. Yikes.

In my defense, I managed to lock myself out of most of my sewing accounts by accident and only just got back in today ... but still. No more excuses! Time to actually give this blog the attention it deserves!

When we last left off on the saga of the Prom dress, I'd completely changed my direction. Unsurprisingly, the finished dress wasn't anything like the second plan either, but really, what's a sewing project without a few last minute design overhauls?

As I described in my last post, the original plan was to make a silver dress with dark blue ribbon embroidery, but when the fabric arrived it was just too gorgeous to embroider over.

I'd worried that a solid colored dress would be too plain, but the stunning sheen of the silk dupioni was more than enough on its own. I think that anything over top of it would have looked tacky.

The design stayed mostly the same - strapless bodice, circle skirt. The bodice has three layers - dark blue cotton lining and canvas which were stitched together and boned like a corset and then the silk over that.

The skirt is also lined with cotton and the hem is supported by about ten yards(!) of horsehair braid.

The actual construction was pretty uneventful; surprisingly enough, this might be one of the simplest dresses I've ever made (mostly because there were no sleeves involved! Praise be!)

The biggest hiccough was really just getting the bodice to fit right. As anyone who's ever worn a strapless dress knows, there's really no room for error here! After multiple mock-ups I was running out of time to experiment finally ready to begin with the silk.

A nice mid-process mirror selfie ...

I'm still not super thrilled with the fit over the bust - if I'd had more time I would have drafted my own custom-fit pattern rather than eyeballing some reductions to the commercial pattern (I think I read somewhere that the average commercial pattern is drafted for a B cup and that was definitely the case here - I just didn't have the bust to fill it out!)

And another one ...

That's really a minor grip though. I'm in love with how the back of the bodice turned out:

(Look at that zipper! Look at it! Admittedly it's kind of gross inside but look how pretty it is outside!!! Hand sewing it really made all the difference!)

My mom and I tried to recreate this photo from last year ...
of course it looked a lot better as a candid than when we tried to pose it!

I'm also really, really, really in love with the drape of this silk. It's so effortlessly elegant - like a waterfall or a sheet of ice flowing down around me.

(Even if it didn't feel like ice - my high school makes everyone wait in the unairconditioned gym before the Promenade and wow did this skirt trap the heat!!)

Overall I'm super pleased with how this dress turned out - I got a lot of compliments on it, and people were so surprised that I'd made it myself. All evening I felt elegant and refined; almost like I could be one of the ladies in this picture:

Source

I'd hoped to blog more about the construction process for this gown, but it all came together in such a blur that I forgot to take many progress pictures! Besides, two months later I don't much feel like playing catch up - time to move on to new and exciting projects!

(Oh, and here's a bonus picture of me and the ladies in the photobooth - I think the mustache really completes the look!)

~ Emma