The Beginning
Project FRANCES. This project is a tribute dedicated to my grandma Fran. My grandma taught me a lot of things throughout my life, how to act in public, manners, how to be a proper lady, and a lot more. She was a very proper women whom I respected deeply, she always acted and looked her best at all times, was a caring and passionate person, loved to teach and discover new experiences with us, trying new things. She never wanted us to see her in a state where she couldn’t be that proper lady that I’ve grown up knowing, even well she was on her death bed she refused for us to see her in that position, she wanted us to remember her they way we’d always knew her.
Her passion and love for sewing seemed to wash over me like a wave, I became obsessed with the idea of creating my own clothing and designing unique dresses that I came up with. The idea that no ones created it before, it was my own small world of fashion. That’s how it clicked for me, I’ve been drawing and making sketches, patterns, and clothing since a young age.
My parents helped fuel this passion when I was younger but signing me up for sewing classes and even finding me a mentor that I plan on connecting with again for my next up coming project.
During the beginning of this project I’ve brainstormed a lot of ideas and three dresses came out of those ideas! The dress that I decided to start with was a dress I call the Stargazing Dress, the Stargazing Dress design was changed a couple times as I started sewing, the main idea of the dress that stayed solid was that the top of the dress was a solid black well the bottom looked more a see through black mesh With white beads littering the bottom and mid waist of the dress mimicking stars with white pearlescent seed beads.
The inspiration that I had for the stargazing dress was from a designer that I found a while ago called Frieda Lepold, she created the ‘A Stary Night Dress’. A dress that was dark navy in colour and had beading along the outline of the seam lines. The design and the placement of the beading inspired me and gave me the idea to place the beads close to the way the appear in the sky, hoping that the end product will allow people to spot the different constellations throughout the night sky.
I started my dress by research and designing a dress, this was mostly just grabbing inspiration from Pinterest and figuring out what details and designs I could add to the base of the dress, once I completed that I went to the store with my mom to find fabric.
A tip I’ve learned throughout the years is that if you don’t plan to order fabric online and instead instore, then you always or rarely find the fabric you were wanting to use in the colour you wanted, so my suggestion is to pick a main colour that you want for your project and explore the whole store till you find a fabric you like. for me I even got more inspiration to add to my dress just from looking at a piece of fabric.
Once the fabric was chosen, I started the creation of my dress. First by cutting out the pieces, sewing them together, cursing to myself because I either measured wrong or something wasn’t turning out the way I thought it would, and coming across new better ideas for the dress well creating it. Then finishing up the seams and adding the desired details to the dress.
The first problem that I ran into during this process was the sleeves. This was a big error on my end as I measured the sleeves fast and didn’t care to double check the measurements. What I found out the hard way was that the sleeves weren’t proportional to one another. I had accidently cut a bigger sleeve and a smaller sleeve, not in length but in width around the hole where my arm was to go. I fixed this by taking it apart, cutting it and sewing it back together. Second thing that I had to change about the dress were how the sleeves were attached to the dress. I first attached them into the bodice, and after a couple attempts to attach them in a neat way, I decided to detach them from the dress and decided instead to attach them to the bodice as off the shoulder sleeves. Another issue I ran into was my bodice not lining put when I sewed to zipper on, I have no clue how I managed it, but to fix it would mean taking apart the whole dress so instead I started to find ways to go around this issue making the best of it. I came up with a bow to place on the back, covering up the misaligned seam
The next steps into my project is getting fabric for my next dress the butterfly dress. This dress I have designed from the beginning, it is by far going to be my most challenging dress in this project and I am going to my mentor for tips and advice on how to create the dress the way I’ve imagined it.