Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Ball gown skirt progress

Oddly enough I found the skirts the most challenging. Well the underskirt went together easily enough, and the pleated trim went on just fine mind you it took awhile because I was hand pleating.

But it was the over skirt that really got me stuck, I went through 3 versions before I was finally happy. 

The problem is that my white material is very heavy and didn't want to drape gently but rather plummet aggressively toward the floor pulling very gentle fold out and causing the whole piece to get caught up in my feet when walking.



So the second iteration was to set the panel in wide pleats. While this prevented the previous problem I hated the look.



So I want back to the original idea and rather then just gather the outside edges I added an additional gather line to the dead center. This helped hold the gentle folds in place and gave the look I had in my head. I just added the little smooth strip down the front to hide the stitches.


I got the idea while looking at fashion plates and noticed that many of the very long gathered overskirts had a center line like I had created probably for the same purpose :)  






4 comments:

  1. Very ingenious! I agree, there's not many options for controlling a draped skirt not that long. The other choice is using something like organza that doesn't have weight, but even then it's so easy for it to get out of whack. I like this idea. I like natural form a lot, anyway. ;)

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    1. Natural form is a whole new animal to me, but I'm having fun working with the line even if it still looks odd to my eye :)

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  2. They do tend to look better with something over the gathering stitches! There is a supposed wedding dress where I was working that doesn't have anything over them and it just looks ... unfinished.

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    1. I agree I tried it with out covering the stitches first and just felt like it was incomplete, I finally couldn't stand it and made the little ribbon to cover them up :)

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