Belle Blue Dress - Fabric, Bodice, Skirt

The Hunt for Fabric

I assumed I’d be able to walk right into JoAnn Fabrics and buy the same turquoise blue cotton I used last time.  Alas, the only solid cottons they had in blue were dark navy (almost black), an aqua “Elsa” blue, and a light purplish “Ouran Host Club” blue. I thought I’d have better luck at Golden D’or, but they had the same colors of blue and nothing else. I was hesitant to order fabric online for something that was supposed to be a “simple” costume.

I had a lucky find at the local Goodwill. In the pile of bed sheets, I found a lovely blue cotton sheet in a good shade of medium blue. It had a looser weave and didn’t look like a “luxury cotton”, which was perfect for a peasant dress. It’s very thin, so the bodice needed interfacing and the skirt needed a second layer. Of course, I’ll never be able to match this fabric again, so I found myself treating this $2.99 bedsheet like it was rare, expensive fabric.

Drafting the Bodice

I confess – I hate making bodices. I didn’t know the first thing about fitting or making mockups. I would find a pattern that was close to my size (although I usually cut it out too small), and when there were gaps, I’d just put more darts in to kind of smooth them out. This created costumes that looked pretty good, but were made very sloppily. (And let’s not even speak of my very first sewn costume, a classic Princess Peach dress that was fit so badly that the diagonal back seam couldn’t even have a zipper put in – it was fastened with Velcro because I didn’t have any other way of making it work!)

I realized that one of my biggest problems was that I had no starting point aside from my own body, and it’s really hard to figure things out when you can only really see the front and maybe the sides of a garment.  I did some research and purchased a dress form close to my size.  I still need to pad out the bottom (I’m close to a 14 at the top, and maybe a 16 or 18 hips), but it’s a great starting point for figuring out the dreaded bodice. Using some bedsheets left over from my peasant Cinderella dress, I traced the princess seams on the dress form to draft out a basic pattern with 7 pieces (front, 2 side fronts, 2 side backs, 2 backs).  Seeing these pieces helped me figure out why my previous costumes always went diagonal on the back edge – I hadn’t put enough curve into the bottom of the back pieces and I always came up short at the bottom edge.

I took these first pieces and traced them on a new piece of bedsheet fabric, adding seam allowances.

I sewed up this first mockup and tried it on.  I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this, but fitting a bodice is so much easier if you baste in a zipper so you can actually try things on. In previous costumes, I’d enlisted my husband’s help to get the back seam right (which never seemed to be straight up and down). He would put pins along the back edge where the two sides met, and then I’d try to figure out how to put a zipper in a wonky back seam.  With a zipper installed, I immediately could see where I needed some adjustments, which I marked right on the mockup with a Sharpie. Apparently I have a higher natural waist than my dress form, so it’s no wonder I always had so many issues fitting commercial patterns around the waist. After a few adjustments, I began to cut out the blue fabric for the bodice.

As the blue fabric was so thin, I interfaced the fabric and lined it with another layer of the same blue fabric. I left the side seams open so I could make some additional fitting adjustments. The bodice has much more structure and smoothness with the interfacing.

Skirt

For the skirt, I went back to my old standby of McCalls 4090, but reduced the fullness by eliminating two of the side pieces and cutting the remaining two symmetrically.  I also made the skirt about a foot shorter than the pattern calls for. The blue fabric was a bit see-through, so I made a second skirt out of a heavier white cotton bedsheet.  I also got to try out my new serger for the long skirt seams and along the top and bottom edges of the skirt to prevent fraying. I gathered both skirts slightly and sewed them to the bottom of the bodice. 

At this point, I need to attach the shoulders, do some fitting on the bodice sides, and hem both skirts. Then I can move on to the apron and blouse.

 

Next: Getting it Wearable