I know my Emmy dress looks a little wedding dress-tastic right now, but that’s pretty unavoidable when you’re working with unbleached muslin! (Also, please ignore the deflated boobs. I decided not to put a padded bra on the dress form just for the photo shoot.)
For the actual dress, I’ve settled on a navy faux silk fabric with a sheer, metallic copper lining, both of which I’m really excited about. It’s kind of hard to get muslin to flow nicely, so the neckline on the final dress should drape better and look less structured. I’m getting started on cutting the real fabric today, so I’m hoping to have an update to share soon!
My biggest frustration thus far: I wish pattern designers understood that petite does not necessarily mean skinny. I’m a short girl, I’m a small girl, but I’m not a *skinny* girl; I’ve got boobs, and butt, and legs, and my small stature doesn’t cancel those out. And, even though I do have the skills required to customize my patterns, doing so adds so much time to the process. Maybe I’m just dreaming, but I feel like large/small bust, waist, and hip adjustments should be built into printed patterns, because I don’t know any ladies who are actually perfectly proportioned!
Okay, I’m getting off of my soapbox now. ;)
What do you think?
This is why I end up mostly sewing for my kids — it's pretty easy to adjust patterns to fit their bodies when they're basically cylinders. Once you start factoring in hips and boobs (I'm 5'3" about I know what you mean about short =/= skinny) it suddenly gets a lot more complicated!
Love it!
And, yeah, I'm the same way. I'm actually in the "petite plus size" category. I need a "Stumpies" pattern line. ;)
I cannot get over how quickly you did this. Perfect design and the dress is going to be gorgeous! Not that I have iota to do with it, but so happy you didn't go with black! The navy and metal copper will be stunning :)
~Molly
Exactly!
I have the opposite problem–I am tallish. I have to lengthen everything–especially shirts. Crochet designers are the worst–they seem to think everyone is 5'2"! And I can rarely wear a store-bought dress. No DDs here LOL.
Thanks, Molly! Once you get in the groove, you can definitely make some serious progress on a dress like this. I'm just hoping that the real thing goes that fast! :)
That's exactly why I think that there should be larger and smaller adjustments built into each pattern. :) For most projects, lengthening or shortening is a matter of extending lines–annoying, but relatively intuitive. But making the bust/hips/waist/thighs larger or smaller deals with the basic proportionality of the pattern, and it's totally hard!
Also, you're totally right about crochet patterns–I even think they're too small most of the time, and I *am* 5'2".
Beautiful!
Amen to your little rant about petite patterns! I'm in the same boat, and it's more than a little infuriating. I've pretty much given up on patterns altogether at this point, and just make things up or trace old clothes. Just wrote a blog post of my own about it, even: http://nheilke.com/blog/?p=4711