Venetian Dress




The pattern for this was pretty simple, just three lines of a rectangle, plus a concave part at the bottom.
There’s quite a bit of wrinkling, but I figured/hoped that once I added the skirt to the bottom of the bodice, it would pull the wrinkles out with it’s weight.

The skirt was sewn on with a lazy cartridge pleat, I didn’t measure it, just started from the middle of the back, and folded up the fabric as I went along.

The wrinkles did calm down a bit with the skirt, and I did not mind the few that were left. I am really happy with the look of the area where bodice meets skirt. Looks flouncy!

I finally have some pictures of my Venetian dress! The ones taken at Estrella were not the most flattering of images, so I enlisted my sister’s aid in camera holding and getting the sleeves on .

So I am still a little unhappy with this dress, particularly with the large opening at the bust.  If only I had made it like two inches bigger in the top half of the bodice!  It isn’t so awful that I can’t wear it to events, but it’s bad enough that I don’t really want to.  I need to think of a way to add to the top half without it looking silly.  But anyways, on to the pictures.

This is my best ‘come hither’ look.  Although, I promise it wasn’t  on purpose, I was just messing with my hair and talking to my sister when she shot this  :)

Note the lovely sleeves, I borrowed them from Asrune, who made them herself a few years ago. I really must make something similar for myself, the poofs are cute.

Here’s the back. I should have put the straps a little further inward. It looks nice, but falls down off my shoulder if I am not paying attention.

I’m a pretty fairy princess, yay!

UPDATE:  One of the benefits of reading dress diaries on the internet is that you get to not only see how someone made something, but hopefully also learn what they would have done differently.  When I made this, my understanding of pattern drafting was very limited, and I had not learned enough about period pattern shapes and tendencies to know that the bodice shape I used was not the best direction I could have gone.

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I used the pattern on the left, but should have used something a little bit more like the right.  I figured that since my waist is smaller than my chest, if the pattern is straight up and down, I should end up with a closed waist and a ‘V’ shaped gap getting bigger as it goes towards my bust.  Sort of correct in theory, but the difference between my underbust and bust is dramatic enough that instead of a smooth V shape, I got a skinny V that suddenly turned into a much wider V.  I should have added a bit of fabric to account for that difference at the side seam.  That would have allowed for more room for the girls, while keeping the front seam straight.

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