A friend of mine is having a 20's inspired party for her birthday, and obviously I wanted to make a dress for it. It would be inspired by the 20's but with a bit more shape because that's how I like my dresses to fit. Cue Tilly's new sewing pattern Francoise. Although the party is in March (I know...) I wanted to get cracking on the dress now in time for the competition and Mum's birthday meal!
The original design was for a scallop hemmed overdress with a flounce sewn to the lining which would show underneath the overdress. This didn't quite work out so I had to go to plan B, as illustrated colourfully below.
I had lots of excess in the bust area of my first muslin, and the darts were too low down.
I unpicked the darts and moved them higher up and hey presto, it fit!
I choose to make my Francoise with a beautiful gold lace found in a vintage charity shop (5 pounds for about 2 metres) paired with a red underlining. Even though it's quite a simple dress to make, the time it took me to make it was doubled due to basting the lace together to the underlining to make sure nothing shifted around. Below you can see me starting off that process in costa before school with a hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. Obviously by the time I got round to taking the pic, the cream and marshmallows were long gone.
I then sewed the dress together and scalloped the hem in accordance with the lace pattern, as seen in the pic below.
As seen in the design above, it didn't work with the flounce attached to the lining so I evened out the hem and attached the flounce to the outer layer instead. This, however made all the proportions wrong.
To fix this I took a chunk out of the seam where the dress hem and the flounce met and now it's just the right length!
Being a bit strapped for cash at the moment, I salvaged a burgandy invisible zip from a prom dress that we found in a charity shop a couple of years ago that never fit right.
This dress makes a nice change from my usual fit and flare silhouette. I can see more happening in the future.
Thank you very much for reading and to Ed for taking the pictures!
Lauren xx