Ninesday, on a Wednesday // a design-related post.

This Ninesday post will be dedicated to the “Runway of the World” student fashion show.

9. Preliminary sketch! The show’s theme is “Runway of the World–Tokyo,London, NYC, Milan, and Paris.” I chose Tokyo and wanted to mix patterns and fold my fabric in ways that are similar to origami.

8. Next step: pattern drafting. I had no idea what I was doing. Nadene (my friend/owner of Faunhouse/sewing mentor) had to go out-of-town, so I decided to just wing it. When she returned, I learned A LOT about what not to do when drafting a pattern. Originally, I was going to just make a basic baggy/square tank. Easy, right? Probably would have been had I stuck to that. I had so much fun draping that I got more than a little bit carried away.

7. After drafting a basic pattern, on to draping. Which is SO SO FUN. I had no clue what I was doing. But Veronica (my dress form) and I made it work. Sort of. After I got more help when Nadene returned. I didn’t think of things like side seams and extra fabric for all of the darts I decided to put into it.

6. You’re probably wondering what happened with the skirt? Well. It began as a dress I found at a thrift store in ATL. I deconstructed it and made a skirt. That sounds fairly simple (and originally, I assumed it would be), but it really wasn’t. One of the biggest lessons learned from this project is that it is sometimes more simple to create a garment “from scratch” than to deal with pre-existing seams and stains and the like. For example–the hem was nearly SEVEN YARDS. I hand-hemmed (blindstitch) the entire thing; this took about twelve hours. Had I chosen new fabric and started from the beginning, I could have done a visible machine hem on a fabric that was more forgiving. Every hole I put into this 50+ year old fabric showed. A lot. Speaking of the hem–I attached a chartreuse lace (hand-dyed by Nadene).

5. More about the skirt: I drafted a pattern for the waistband and attached it. And re-attached it. About three times. We’ll call this process “the learning curve.” Really, the entire process had that curve. Some parts were more difficult than others, though. Don’t even get me started on fitting it and creating a closure,while trying to keep the pattern of the fabric in-line (this wasn’t really achieved, unfortunately).

4. Finally, a finished product!

3. It’s all in the details. Chartreuse embroidery thread to create the pleats on the front. There are several other places with this thread!

2. I spent hours, upon hours, upon hours sewing. And seam ripping. And basting. And thank God Nadene was there to help me do things properly.  I could not have done it without her!

1. I’m either wearing this or this to the show. I’m excited that I will actually have a reason to dress up! The orange one will stand out more, but we’ll see whether or not I can find shoes to go with it.

You can expect photos from the show coming up. You’ll see this ensemble until you’re as sick of looking at it as I am.