Mock Up Toile

The past two days i have been working on my toile dress, to see how it looks and how it is to make, i set my self a target of one and a half days which i'm glad to say i stuck to! it wasn't a difficult dress to make and with my previous skills from my college corse i was quite quick in making it.

I made it from a light green silk fabric as i intent to make my final piece from silk so i wanted to see what the fabric was like to work with when making the dress and also the weight of the dress as i plan to embellish onto it.

I started by cutting out my pattern from the Vogue pattern i had bought... Then my dog decided to run in all over it and ripped it to bits... great start!.. was it a sign?.. haha!

So i started by patching this up with masking tape thanks to buster!.. anyway once i had cut my pattern out i laid the pattern pieces on my dress to cut out and folded the fabric as i needed most things twice.

There was another long panel on a separate fabric piece as it wouldn't fit along side this with the grain of the fabric running in the right direction.. but you get the idea :)

So then i started to piece each part together on my sewing machine.. which isn't very good so i was quite brave in my opinion to attempt my dress haha!..

I started with the top part of the dress.. the pattern and dress its self is lined and got boning and interfacing in to keep it in the right position for the top but for what i'm using it for it didn't need all that so i just used a light weight interfacing to stiffen it up a little

and tad darrr!!.. i had this complete before dinner which i was chuffed about as this is the most difficult part of the dress.. the rest is just long flowing panels which wouldn't take long at all to put together. As this top would usually be lined instead i just made two top pieces and sewn them together so we had lining on the reverse so i could give the top part a nice finished seam.

Seeing how my leather top idea worked with the dress (Not finished obviously)

I then attached all the panels together and then attached it to the top part of the dress, i was amazed at how well and quick  i had put it together since not doing it for a long time - all i had left to do was the hem and the zip which i planned to do the next day.

As the weight of the silk is quite heavy the dress did not puff out at the bottom as much as i intended it too as shown on the patten of the dress i bought..

And i haven't included the bow and the straps.. however i now began to think of how i can puff the skirt out with a way that will work for my final show as i didn't intent to show it on a mannequin. 

Day 2..

Today i have had a trip to town and bought an underskirt to see how this would work under my dress

 i bought this to see if it would work, it would sit on the mannequin but i don't know how id do it with no mannequin as i don't really want to attach it to the dress and this is how it looked..

Over all I'm quite pleased with everything about the dress and i now know how long it will take for me to put together. It still needs the hem doing and a good iron :) i was even thinking i could use this as a final piece and bondiner some of my bugs and flowers onto it and embellish it that way but we will see, my other option is to make the pattern pieces to size in illustrator and place my pattern into them and have them printed.

Hope you like it!