Photographs of Finished dress

Dress Modelled by Kayleigh Falcus.Photographer  Garry Barrett

                        I haven,t had a lot of time to edit them properly but I couldnt resist having a little play on photoshop.

Latest update on FMP

Well I have restitched the dress back together after my tantrum.My main problem is trying to fit the dress when I'm working on two different size mannequins.I can not tell you how many problems this has caused.This has been my main problem through out this module .As I wasn't allowed to borrow a mannequin to work on and I have less than two weeks left,the only solution I can think of is to just size the dress to the mannequin I have at home even though I know the dress wont fit for the show but I,ll cross that bridge when I get there.

As the dress is made up of many separate pieces it can be constructed in many different ways.I have taken photos along the way to see which way it works the best.I have got the front how I want but the back is still not working how I want it to.

Taking shape!

   Who would of thought doing a few drapes would be so difficult!

Temper Temper

Well frustration got the better of me ,I had a hissy fit because I couldn't get the underskirt right so I unpicked the whole thing Oh Dear!

Embroidery and Photoshop samples

I needed a break from sewing so I messed around on photo shop with one of my drawings . For some strange reason I had the illusion that I might of had time to produce some wallpaper or gift wrap but saying as my dress is now in a heap on the floor thrown down in frustration , I think these designs may have go in my to do file.

I sampled a few of my small trees on the vinyl cutter.I,am going to put them on the bottom half of my dress.I also tried it on felt, I was going to embroider around them to use for the back piece of the bodice but I didn't like it as much as my other samples.

                                                                       Vinyl on Felt

I started another piece of embroidery ,I drew a tree lightly on the felt and embroidered it but again I wasn't happy with the result.

                                          I like these samples but the colours were a little too orangy.

                     I'm happy with theses samples and this is what I will use for my final piece .

I made a lot of little felt pieces that I'm going to sew individually in clusters over areas on the dress.I best get sewing!

photos of dress developement from the start

My initial idea to construct the dress was to sew all the pieces I had made to a long slip, when I tried it though it was apparent it wasn't going to work as the slip wasn,t strong enough to hold the weight of the fabric and the felt. My Next idea was to use a boned corset and make an underskirt in tulle and attach them together. Another student kindly donated a wedding dress to me so I could use the underskirt (thank you Becky !) Unfortunately it was a three tired size 18 meringue. I deconstructed it to see if I could alter it to fit but after many alterations and pinning, it just wasn't working. I decided to make an underskirt myself from scratch.I brought a small knee length slip and some tulle that I was going to gather and sew to the hem of the slip and attach it to the bodice. All a good idea in theory how wrong I was ! It has been the bane of my life for the last 6 weeks ,every time I got one part right another part didn't fit or hang right,and it didn't help that I was trying to fit it to two different mannequin's.

Attempts at making an underskirt using many pieces sewn together to form the under skirt,there so many pieces trying to get them all to fit properly has proved a lot harder than I thought

I  sampled quite a few pieces of fabric for the nuno felt, this was going to be the main fabric for the most part of the dress so I wanted to get it right . I haven't used this technique before so I wasn,t as familiar with the shrinkage as I am with the wet felting.The first 2 pieces I made were too small as it shrank a lot more than I had allowed for.I needed a large piece of silk so I had to use my kitchen blind as this was the only thing large enough to roll.This was really time consuming and exhausting.After a few attempts I was happy with the 2 pieces I made for the front and the back.I made two large pieces of felt with lots of holes to create texture and interest for the outside layer of my dress (I soon realised I would need a few more to get the effect I was looking for) I made another 6 pieces to give me the fullness I wanted.I wanted to also use the vinyl cutter to cut some small delicate trees from my drawings to place on the skirt.I sampled a few colours and settled for the gold. Finally I had all the separate pieces I needed to start constructing my dress

This is the first mock up of my dress using the 3 tired underskirt ,Its just not right I wasn't happy with it because there,s too much fabric on the bottom half .

Still trying to get the underskirt how I want it.This is not going to plan although I can visualise how I want the dress to look like I just cant get it right grrrrhhhhh.