Blogger Dresses

A long time ago, or at least that is what it feels like!....I had a conversation with the lovely Andi B Goode via twitter about some dresses she wanted to make but didn't feel she had the sewing know how. After a little conversation, we thought we'd do a small run of a dress designed by her. I also spoke to Gemma at Retro Chick as I know she's a savy dresser and shopper and always has an eye for style.

They both designed about 4 - 6 different dresses, which then got narrowed down to 4 for   their lovely readers chose from. It was too hard to choose our selves as we all hard different things we liked for different reasons. People voted and below are the two winning designs.

 

Andi B Goode's winning design for Lady K Loves as voted by her readers.

 

Retro Chick's winning design for Lady K Loves as voted by her readers

The next stage was the fabric and the pattern, I drafted one up for each dress as shown below, 

 

I made some changes to the original dress, the main on being that rather than having a straight waist line I lengthened the skirt and went for an under bust hem. While I know for some curvier ladies that can be a little daunting, the cut should work to help lengthen the body and the bust has plenty of room to be filled!

 

Andi's dress at the draft stage,the 2 button holes on either side of the skirt are for placement only, in the actual article they button holes are on the inside with the buttons facing in so it provides extra secure closure with out being visible.

Once the pattern and basics were worked out it was time to go to the fabric shop! Which was the really exciting bit since as much as possible of these dresses is made from vintage fabric. So a trip to St. Leonards, to the wonderful Wayward haberdashery was in order....which meant coffee and cakes at the lovely Little Larder. Wayward is fantastic, full of so much exciting and inspiring fabric, buttons, trims, vintage hand made lace, military braid, gold thread, cards, scarf's, blankets, throws, it's amazing. The point where I've nearly gone back though and deleted that, I don't want to share this shop, it's too good!

So after some coffee and being in awe, and wanting everything, and getting excited abut all of the wonderful clothes I could make I took some pictures of suitable fabrics for the girls and their dresses, and this are the ones they went for.

 Andi B Goode buttons,

 

Retro Chick Fabric.

Gemma's dress fabric is very different to her original design, but I saw it and thought she'd love it, and she 

did!

Main fabric for Andi's dress, again it's a different colour than originally intended, but it's part of going for all vintage fabric, not everything you want is there, but what is, is beautiful!

So the dresses are now done and have been sent off to the bloggers. I'm excited to see them wearing the dress they designed, and really hope you like them once they go on sale.