Not-So-Little Black Dress

The end of the semester is upon us, and I could not be more excited. Seriously, things have just been heating up this week with school, with my biggest project being in my Patternmaking class.

Now, I'm just gonna say that I would rather work on a final project than a final paper ANY day. It's just the way I am. So from the very beginning of the semester, I looked at the syllabus and have been waiting for this assignment to come ever since.

It's called the Little Black Dress assignment. We design a dress from sketches to construction. A little play on words here because while it was a project to make a little black dress, the play on words is that it's actually little--as in designed and sewn in 1/2 scale.

I've shown people pictures of the dress and they ask me if I could wear it. I repeat: this dress is 1/2 scale...as in 36" tall. Even if it looks different on the mannequin, this is not a life size dress. But it was a life-size project. I present to you

KAYLA 1137

(Kayla because that's my name, 11 is my number in volleyball, and 37 is the number of hours I spent working on it.)

 I wanted to do something spectacular, and what's more spectacular than a full-length formal gown? If it looks tall, it is...I made the length and set the mannequin to be my height (in half scale, of course).

It started with this sketch

 Apparently I sketched the back a LOT lighter than the front:

The pattern pieces ended up looking like this. It's fully lined so almost every one of these pieces was cut out on both lining fabric, and the outside fabric.

 Usually I'm lazy and don't pin very much, but let me just say that when you've already logged twelve hours on making patterns, you're not gonna take any chances. As seen below, I may have gone a tad overboard with the pinning.

All necessary nothing and clipping was done

Pins for days:

One of the four fully lined, fabulous ruffles.

Want more pictures of the final dress? Cool, because I want to show you some:

FRONT:

BACK:

RIGHT SIDE:

LEFT SIDE:

This project was seriously so fun. I logged in a lot of late night hours to crank this bad boy out and I am so proud of it. It's so fun to have a vision in your brain, but then to see it in real life from your own creation is one of the best feelings there is in the whole wide world. 

Again, just because it's rad: