One of my best friends invited me to be their date to opening night of the Broadway show they are working on. I was inspired by this Teuta Matoshi dress, and had the idea that I would make a strapless dress base with swappable sleeves.
I bought an embroidered mesh from Blue Moon Fabrics to use, and some black satin for my lining.
I decided to start with the Rose Cafe Bustier as my base pattern, which I have used before. Last time I made it, I made a number of alterations to the cups to make them fit better, but I felt like I could do much better. Having spent most of the last year learning how to make my own bras, I had a much better idea how to alter this pattern. I made a number of adjustments to adjust for shape. I used the 3 piece cup for the lining, and made a darted cup pattern to use for the embroidered mesh.
I put together the bodice, using coutil as the lining. This was absolutely a nightmare, and I do not recommend it. Fortunately, I also made the error of not validating that my fabric orientation would support a giant circle skirt, so I was going to have to remake it anyhow. I did test for fit, and the fit was good, but the coutil was too heavy, and I had a few minor fit quibbles.
I switched to some cotton lawn for the base lining, and set about to actually make the dress. I included some anchored pockets in the side seams, and I only attached the embroidered mesh to the lining on the skirt to the bottom of the pocket, letting the layers be separate below that. The dress got an invisible zipper because it's what I had, and I would not do that again and I will probably make the back a corset back at some point but I had not thought this through enough here, it's not the right choice but it held up.
At this point, I pinned the dress to my dressform, planning to let it hang for a few days to let the skirt sag. 3 weeks later, I finally got around to hemming and deciding what to do next. I trimmed the whole skirt to be a circle again, and I did a simple double fold hem on the black satin, and a serged rolled edge on embroidered mesh.
I decided what would make the dress better was armor. I was originally going to make it plain black, but then I had the idea that fashion pauldrons would be way more fun. I was in a time crunch, so I started with this template by My Heart and Armour. The template is not designed for fabric, so I used layers of coutil, satin, and embroidered mesh bound with satin bias binding I had.
Because I love to leave things to the last moment, I spent the afternoon before the opening hand sewing bra clips into the dress to hold the ribbon in place, and sewing the ribbon to the pauldron.
I did make it in time, and it was a great look, even if I don't have a single picture of me from that night except this selfie I took in my friend's hallway before I left.
