Tara's prom dress

Here are the pictures of Tara's prom dress. Tara called me on April 6th and asked if I could have a prom dress made by April 22nd? After talking with her for a while, I figured out that the design she had in mind was not all that complicated and that she was willing to pay an appropiate fee for doing the dress at the last minute, so I squeezed her in.

Normally, I help my clients find their fabric. Once I know what design their dress will be, and we know what kind of fabric will work well with it, I begin looking at internet sights and forward those to the client so that they can obtain swatches. There are also a couple of local fabric stores I will send them to well informed about what they are looking for. Tara, because of the time crunch had to find her own fabric. She found a couple of fabrics at Mill Outlet that she absolutely loved and was able to get the rest at Joann's.

This sketch in the picture is what she drew and brought to me. We decided on a different hemline, but other than that, stayed true to her sketch.

There are a couple of things I would have done differently had I had another week or two. The first decision we made was to avoid a back seam on the skirt so that the seam wouldn't show at the bottom of the skirt from the front. This meant that the zipper would end at the bottom of the bodice instead of going down into the skirt. The dress went over her, but JUST BARELY using this method. Doing it again, I would have just made the seam in the back.

Something goofy happened with the top layer of orange fabric on the bodice. No matter how much I smoothed it out, it came out wrinkled looking when she put it on. The fabric was an incredibly thin gauze silk. I think maybe it need stabalized with an iron on interfacing. I don't think I'll work with it again if I can at all avoid it.

I was able to use 2 new techniques in this dress that I haven't tried before. One was the beaded hand-picked zipper and the other was running an elastic "suspender" through the straps to hold the dress down securely at the neckline. These are both in Threads articles, I'll find which ones and update the post in a few days when I can get back in my studio. (we're having construction work done in the basement).

Over all, it was great to collaborate with Tara. She has some sewing experience and definately had her own sense of style. This was a very fun dress to do, even if I got it done at 1 am the day of prom. (the pictures are of Tara at 9 am, she had come over in her pj's!)