Appliqué madness

For the main element of my garment I am creatin individual ruffles which I will bead and ssew my print on to! 

To create these I cut out random wavy shapes in two different materials. The dark blue one would be cut slightly bigger than the light blue fabric so I could bondaweb them together! I created loads and loads of these so I could gather 4 individually and sew them together to create this 

This one also has my print appliquéd on to it! I am also beading about 6 of these and in total I will have about 17/18 individual ruffles each with 8 pieces of fabric on each one. 

 This is a ruffle with my print and hand beaded by me. 

This is just a rough idea of what it will look like but I am not showing you the finished results yet!!!! 

Final toile

Once I had drafted all the pieces I needed I made a toile up in calico to make sure it worked how I wanted it to and I am super pleased with myself and the outcome of my design! 

Sleeve time!!

To create my sleeve I used a basic sleeve block and manipulated the pattern to create a gathered sleeve. 

I sectioned it off at the top on the shoulder into 4 sections, if you measured it all the way down to the cuff they would be equal sections!

I then cut the pieces out and placed them further up playing about with them to see how full I would want the shoulder to be.

Once that was stuck down I re shaped it at the top again ... 

Once I had made the pattern I cut it out and made it up in fabric and this was the outcome! 

 Luckily It  worked first time and I was super super pleased!! 

Moving on to the skirt...

To create the skirt I used a basic dress bodice block. I used the bottom half shaping it to a point so my skirt would come to a point below the waist at the front and the back. 

i split it into 3 sections measured it and then did the same on the back .... 

I then cut and split them, placed them onto a clean piece of paper an measured equally between each section and shaped the panel of the skirt how I wanted it. 

I did the same with the other pieces of the skirt too.. 

 

 So here we have my centre back. Middle back and side back. 

Creating the back...

To create the back I just used the back of a basic block and shaped it how I would like it. Taking the dart out as I shaped it. 

Drafting my pattern - The Aquamarine 014 Dress

First of all I started off drawing round the front and back of a basic bodice block, 

I then started to draw on the neckline that I wanted on the front and I started to manipulate and create my design from

The basic shape. 

 You can see the neckline I haw drawn here and the scribble is the part I am goin to cut out. 

The aim of the neckline was to have it more off to the side on the left shoulder an have the right  shoulder the usual shape. 

I then started to change the back.. So far you can see I am about to alter the back of the neck. 

I then started to create style lines on my pattern so that it would give it more shap. Here I am removing the darts to create the shape/style line I want. 

I drew on it with a different coloured pen so that it was obvious to me what the lines/dots were for.  

I did the same to the back, I removed darts to create style lines but for the back I had to draw out two and do them slightly different with it being an asymmetrical pattern. 

Here you can see I have divided the front bodice into three parts and the neckline looks how I want it to look.(only on paper so far) 

This is the back split into two parts. 

Here I placed my patterns on to calico ready to cut out and sew up to see what we was working with. (I don't know if you can spot this but this is where I went wrong. I didn't draw out another back and alter it to match the side that was different) I just cut two out of the back and one out of the front as I thought that is what I needed.

So I sewed that up and this was the outcome. It's not bad but it's my great either. The pattern cutting is right on the front for what I wanted but it looked silly . It looks as if its not sewn properly and I wasn't happy with it so I knew I'd have to change something. 

How ever the back didn't match up right and the shoulder was off due to me not changing it to match the asymmetrical front so I had to make another piece 

 

I also altered the neckline getting rid of some bits as you can see on here to make it look so that it would be constructed properly as well as actually being made right. 

I made that up and I wasn't happy with that either the neckline was too wide so I started adding bits and cutting it while it was on The mannequin. 

Oops I'm

One step ahead! Before that we added the triangular bits at the bottom to create the shape i wanted adding it to both sides and the middle of the bodice 

I then tried that again made it up to see the results!! 

Again! I wasn't happy the neckline was far too wide and it just didn't come down low enough for me, the shape just wasn't right at all so I started cutting away on the mannequin and then I had to transfer that to the pattern which was a bit of a challenge! But I measured it and managed to get the shape right. 

Here I am transferring the shape from the garment to the patter adding bits in.