Hey guys! I'm back with another post today~! Once again, I'm incredibly sorry that I haven't been able to keep up with my regular blogging schedule. It's been really rough and incredibly hectic dealing with my life lately and there's been so much to do or I've just felt too awful to work. I was thinking about changing my usual blogging style from chronological order to a pick and choose type of deal...and by that I mean that I'm going to be writing posts whenever and they won't be posted in order but will be posted and thoroughly written and edited when I'm in the mood to write them. What do you guys think? Please comment down below!
Nonetheless.. let's get on with the dress!
So actually, I had already written this post but my laptop had spontaneously shut off and so I was left with having to rewrite this beauty once again. But, first things first.. I had gone around to several different department stores to find the right dress that both Johanna and I had loved. The dress that you see here is the original dress that we had decided upon getting! It's a super cute beauty that I just absolutely loved because of the delicate color and because of the stunning top. It's a rather nice dress too. When picking out clothing for customization you always want to make sure that the fabrics and the craftsmanship of the pieces are where you want them to be. For me, I always try to balance out prices and quality as much as possible because it really makes a difference in the end result.
Next, I had gone to get some fabrics! I went to Joann's and purchased several different kinds of fabrics, all that had worked together with the dress I had bought. I ended up coming home with 2 yards of a glittery sheer and iridescent fabric, 2 yards of a beautiful lavender colored satin fabric, and 2 yards of a stunning dark purple to lilac ombre lace fabric with iridescent qualities to it. While I was there, I had also bought some supplies for the corsages that I had made which included the chain that I had later used as an embellishment on the dress.
Side note.. make sure that you have a good idea of what you want your customized clothing to look like at the very end. It's really important to have a good idea or a design to be working off of as it helps save you time and money... and you won't find yourself throwing away any of the supplies you bought because you messed up. (I say this from experience as a cosplayer.)
For my dress's idea, I had thought about a high-low design for the skirt. I knew from the beginning that Johanna had owned a beautiful white high-low dress and so I had made the decision to wear one also...but I still had no idea how I was going to use the fabrics together with the dress.
So I had taken the fabric and I had rearranged them several times around the dress until I was satisfied with what I had at the very end.
I had came to the conclusion that I was going to layer the fabrics like so and that I was going to leave the dress with a long train and a flowing-like front.
Remember when I mentioned that I was layering the fabrics? Here's a close up of the order that I had the fabrics in. (These are shots of before they were properly hemmed!)
My next step was to properly hem all of the fabrics that I had bought so that the edges wouldn't fray. I had taken them over to the sewing machine and hemmed them the way that each of the individual fabrics should have been. Although I had gone the extra mile and made a double fold hem after already hemming it (mostly because I didn't trust myself...but yeah).
After all of that had been done, I had taken the fabrics back, arranging them in the order and design that I had wanted them to be in, and then I had used safety pins to secure them in place while also using some basting stitches for certain folded areas in the front.
One of the next things that I had done was I had to fix the back of the dress! Once I had finished taking care of everything in the front of the dress, I had to immediately take the dress of as delicately as possible and then pin and baste all of the fabrics down to the base dress. After I finished, I had cut the fabric down the zipper to help me sew the fabrics down to the base dress properly...and so I don't accidentally forget that there's a zipper there and completely forget about it..
After the cutting and pinning/basting was finished, I had taken the dress over to the sewing machine and angrily sewed the fabric down onto the base dress. I made sure to try and sew the fabric additions in the right places...but sometimes I'd make a foolish mistake and accidentally sew the fabric on the wrong way...making me force myself to undo everything before the screw up to hopefully save myself from my dumb mistake.
But..thankfully, I had a cute little helper to help me out when I got frustrated!
Near the end though.. I started to face some problems. I wasn't sure if I had wanted to create a design around the waist using the top, sheer fabric or if I had wanted to stick to the original design that I had in my mind from the beginning.
And it was honestly really conflicting. I find that it's one of the biggest downsides to being a spontaneous designer like myself and working off an idea rather than a descriptive sketch... but it's not something that I could help myself at that point in time.
What I did decide on doing regardless of the design of the dress.. was that I had added in the draped silver chain in the middle of the dress. When I was working with the fabrics, I had arranged the base dress's bottom half a certain way to create a ruffled look in the front. Unfortunately, this had led to an empty spot in the middle of the dress and looked awkward... so I had tried to fix it by adding in an embellishment. Thankfully, this worked in my favor as all of the accessories we had were silver.
In the end, I decided on the look that you see above. It was a nice combination of the original look that I had tried to achieve along with the look that put my project to a pause.
Now with my decision made, I finished sewing up a few final touches along with adding in some extra jewels in the top half of the dress...
And we're now done! Ignore the messiness of my room's floor.. I do all of my work there.
The dress has a rather long train in the back which makes it a little difficult to walk in and a little dirty as it picks up dirt from being on the floor too much... but I thought that it was best to stay that way. I've always been told that prom dresses were supposed to be long and the look that this dress had in the end was everything that I had wanted.
Here are some better shots of the top half and of the chains in the final design.
Also! Not only do you get a nice look of the bodice in the picture below..
...but you get a fun little sneak peek of the corsages that I had made for the occasion! I use fake silk flowers and ribbons for weddings/formal events.
Sorry for the blurriness! But here's the final look of the folds.
Truthfully, the folds remind me almost of those swirly crystal glass wind chimes. Kind of like the ones here: http://www.wayfair.com/Solar-Powered-Spiral-LED-Wind-Chime-830-1317-HWP1042.html but.. yeah. Thanks for reading and I hope that you stay tuned for our prom pictures~!
And beyond this banner are silly pictures! Ooops. Sorry about that!
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