Something modern for a change

A friend of mine is attending a wedding in a month and I thought it might be fun to make her a dress. So, I perused the various pattern books at work and for some reason really liked one from Vogue (number 1104). It's from a modern designer (Anna Sui). It's not what I usually make or am drawn to, but I figured, what the heck, it's been a while since I've worked in chiffon, and I might just have all the materials I need for this anyway except the buttons. This is what I made:The only change I made to the pattern was to slash it near the bottom and add 2 inches to the length, otherwise the bottom ruffles would just barely have met the kneecap. The shell is silk chiffon, the ruffles are crinkle silk chiffon, the lining is silk lining fabric, and the buttons are shell. I cut it to a pattern envelope size 10.

Chiffon is difficult to work with, and I knew this beforehand. The twisted nature of the fibers means it tends to go everywhere on you, so I can't work with it when I'm hungry, tired or impatient, otherwise I'll somehow make the sewing machine suck it down into the bobbin housing where it will get covered with linty grease. This is especially true of the green I used for the ruffles, which is crinkle chiffon, and therefore twice as difficult to sew. The advantage of crinkle chiffon is that if the thing you make ends up being too big, you can point your steamer at it, and it will magically gather in all it's little pleats, making the item in question narrower.

The crinkle chiffon was difficult to hem on the ruffle parts, because they are circle cut and therefore have a lot of bias cut sections which are most unruly. When I put the edges of them through the serger set on a narrow rolled hem, the machine quite neatly sheared the edge off and ignored the fact that I actually wanted it to wrap the edge in thread. Even doing the traditional narrow hem resulted in a very wild, curling hem that I didn't like. So I ended up ironing the hem up, zig-zag stitching it on the fold, and trimming away the excess.

The belt came out fairly well on this. I was able to serge off the long strait edges to finish them. The ends I had to narrow hem the regular way because they were cut on the bias.


Overall, I don't think this was my best piece of work, and the materials were a pain in the rear to try to get them to do what I wanted. It took me a long time to get it made up reasonably well. It got some fabric out of my stash. I don't know if I or my friend will ever really want to wear it. It is, however, wearable on the right person I imagine that person to be tall with long legs and stunning hair.

Thanks for modelling the dress, Froggi!