Sewing adventures! I made an evening gown for myself, all the way from drafting the pattern to hand-sewing the finishes. It was very fun, challenging and very much not straight forward.
I had the inspiration a week and a half before an event I wanted to wear the new dress to, and I managed to finish it the night before. The first version was ready for fitting after one long day full of sewing, but I had to cut out the bodice and make a new one due to fit and fabric issues.
The fabrics were cheap polyester velvet that was knit = stretchy, and a shiny and slippery polyester fabric for the lining that was not stretchy (this stretch mismatch caused problems). The first version had continuous panels all the way from the neckline to the hem, and the weight of the skirt stretched the bodice out of shape so that I had a really hard time attaching it to the lining at the armholes.
So I adjusted the pattern to have a waistline to help support the weight of the skirt by attatching it to the lining, and added sleeves so that I didn't have to attatch the dress to the lining at the armholes. And I got extra practice with sewing the invisible zipper, which was originally in the back seam, but that I moved to the side for the final version, eliminating the need for a seam at the center back.
Here's the final outfit! I also painted my nails to match the dress and I was very happy with how closely I managed to match the colour.
The base for the pattern, a princess-seamed bodice block, is from freesewing.org. It's a fantastic website that lets you generate sewing patterns to your measurements, and there's tons of customisation, tweaks and design options to choose from for each pattern. Highly recommend! They also have a paperless option, that gives you all the lengths of the sides and points on the patterns so that you don't even have to use a printer. I traced the pattern pieces to paper by hand that way!
