That’s a mouthful for the title of this post, but I felt that Sam and I had almost bitten off more than we could chew with this latest project. I am in the middle of doing the re-structuring of a ready-to-wear maternity … cocktail dress ? … into a HOPEFULLY awesome and wonderful flowy romantic dress for her (and Skittle!) to be photographed in soon. The Maternity Shoot. It’s a big deal to a photographer of newborns and moms-to-be herself.
We started with this dress, which was THE find that got us past the talking stage. It has almost all the right “bones.”
The first thing we did was hack of those distracting and oh-so-80’s sleeves. I trimmed them up nicely later and unstitched the underarm seam. Much more flowy. That’s the opening photo.
This dress has been inspired by a kajillion dollar gown she spotted. We batted ideas around for weeks, then finally got busy. We bought chiffon. Lots of chiffon. Pastel colors and also matching to the RTW dress. I went back for more, plus a few other types of fabric I think we might find appropriate. I will use any excuse to buy fabric, you know! :)
At this point, I was feeling like we needed the help of the little birdies from Disney’s Cinderella movie. I can’t look at this picture without hearing “Cinder-elly, Cinder-elly… ” LOL Having all the unneeded fabric bunched up into the waist area looks pretty bad!
You can see in the full dress pictures that waistband is just too wide for this petite-torso and very-out-there baby. And you should see her now 2 weeks later! Waistband must be minimized; bodice must be snugged up.
The back neckline needs to be a bit lower so it doesn’t cover up the bottom edge of her tattoo… I was originally thinking of just folding under the top corners. It would have worked well enough.
But with the weird way the back waistband would look if I only adjusted the front waistband, and how I needed to take in the bodice without taking away any of the skirt’s fullness, and then the zipper that could be done much more gracefully, it only made sense to do this…
Get the coffee ready…
Start picking out stitches and getting to know the construction techniques of the dress…
Lucky for me, things were done right during the construction of this dress. I decided to take it apart because I could see that the dress would survive. My survival — that’s still in doubt ;) This moment was a scary moment.
At this point, I just kept working that seam ripper!
At this point, I walked away because it was ready to put back together! yay! I have to take breaks at given points so I stop overthinking everything. Clarity comes with time. And more coffee.
Now we work on the long flowing layers. You may see us commenting on facebook Wednesday when we get together to do this. I expect I will have an Arghh or two to share :)
Why my children keep coming to me with these projects… it is both a compliment of the highest order, and a hair-tearing ride! And fun. Can’t forget the fun!
Gail
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