adventures in drafting // self-striping

Striped dress

Striped dress

Striped dress

Striped dressdress: self-drafted // shoes: Seychelles

**Photos should hopefully be fixed now!

No, not like sock yarn. Like when you go crazy and decide to make your own striped fabric.

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In my defense I really tried to find navy and white striped fabric and just couldn’t. At the beginning of this semester we were assigned a storyboard of a five garment mini-collection, with the stipulation that one of our three garments due this semester had to be from the board. Now, a normal person would’ve drawn garments in a solid, or easier-to-find kind of print. I decided I just had to have my wide navy/white stripes.

So I sewed my own. I bought peachskin fabric from Joann’s in navy and ivory, cut them into 4″ strips, and sewed them together with a 1/2″ seam allowance so each stripe ended up being 3″ wide. Perffffection.

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Drafting this was a bit of an adventure. Basically I wanted to re-make the Arrow dress from Dear Creatures (looove), but with a bodice that would actually fit me (I think they draft for an A or B cup and I’m a D –my bewbs are definitely not the happiest in that dress), and with a slightly more modern silhouette.

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I started off with the same bodice sloper we use for class. For the front I did a sleeveless adjustment, made a cut-away armhole, and lowered the neckline a bit. Then I drew in a princess line variation from the center front neck diagonally down to the side seam, and moved the side bust dart to the neckline, and transferred the waist dart (with a new apex 3/4″ over like Armstrong says) to ease. (You can kind of see it in the photo right above.)

The back was a little more tricky because my pivot points happened to be right where I wanted the back cut out. I ended up basically just doing a lot of contouring and it seemed to work out. It took a few tries though. The first attempt had a strange lump where most people lack a body bulge, and another attempt was slightly sideways.

The skirt is the same skirt pattern from my Christmas dress. And lastly, I drafted a flat roll Peter Pan collar because why not. :]

In terms of construction, I lined the whole thing with muslin because I have a crap ton of it for school, I needed something light in color because of the white stripes, and I was on a roll and didn’t want to have to stop and drive to Joanns for actual lining fabric.

The verdict: it fits a million times better than the Arrow dress! The only thing I’m a bit sad about is that the bottom edge of the bodice seems to have stretched out a bit, possibly when I was sewing the stripes, and there’s a weird wrinkle in the tummy area of the bodice. Oh well. Also I don’t love what’s happening with the stripes in the back. It’s like my bum ate most of the white stripe.

Anyway, other than those two tiny details, I adore this dress. I’ve already worn it to a party and it was the perfect mix of twee and fancy.

 

17 thoughts on “adventures in drafting // self-striping”

    1. Thanks!! Hmmm everything seems to be showing up on my laptop and phone. Anyone else having this issue?

  1. Wow! I saw the inspiration dress and I feel that yours is more stylish, well done.
    You’ve inspired me to think more about some red widestriped (butcher stripe) style fabric that I have.
    You’re so creative, you must feel sooooooo great when you wear this?
    The pictures all show up for me on the blog but not via Bloglovin

  2. I love this! Bravo for creating your own fabric. I’ve always wanted to do this and now I feel really inspired to. You look gorgeous as always!

  3. GIRL YOU ARE CRAZY. However I totally feel you on the striped fabric…why is it SO hard to find JUST the right stripe?? It’s like an endless quest– too thick, too thin, spaced out weird, bad fabric, wrong direction, wrong color…maybe I need to take a cue from you and make my own! The end result is divine!

    1. Hehe thanks!! I have no idea!! It’s not like I’m looking for a specific type of flower or specific geo print. But honestly, it wasn’t even that bad. Just an extra hour or two of work to sew the stripes together. :]

  4. #ilovestripes! You’ve done, outdone yourself from creating your fabric all the way to constructing your dress. I would have never considered piecing fabric to get the whole piece I needed ?. Now my mind has been forever bent, thanks ?.

    1. Thank you! I’m not totally sure why I’ve never tried this before. I was explaining my idea to a friend and got a “you’re insane” look but in the end it wasn’t actually that much more work!

  5. Loooooove this dress, thank you for sharing all “the behind scenes” for this dress construction. Can’t wait to see your future designs.

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