Rosy Posey Dress: Construction

This post is coming out much, much later than I had originally anticipated. Once I decided to work with a store-bought pattern, progress went much more smoothly, even piecing the bodice together from the two fabrics. Here’s a little bit of an overview of how construction of the dress went down:

The Bodice/Midriff:

I started out by fully cutting out the pattern pieces for the topmost part of the bodice out of ‘Burgundy w/ Roses.’ From there, I eyeballed placement and size of the pieces of the pink floral fabric based on my reference picture of the original dress. After size and shape was determined and the pieces were cut out, I sewed them to the base burgundy piece one at a time, cutting away the excess burgundy fabric as I went with pinking shears. Once the front of the bodice was assembled, I attached that to the back of the bodice. The straps were made and pinned on, and then the lining was sewed in. The “midriff” section of the dress was cut out of the pink floral fabric, and I made the decision to go against the original design of the dress and continue the pink fabric all the way around the midriff/waistband section of the dress. The midriff was then attached to the gathered bodice.

The Skirt/Lining:

The skirt was cut completely from the ‘Burgundy w/ Roses’ fabric and simply constructed using straight seams finished with pinking shears. The lining was cut out to correspond with the colors of the other pieces of the dress (the midriff was pink and the skirt was maroon), constructed, and sewn in–finished with a modified bound seam.

Putting the bodice together.

Ungathered bodice.

The bodice and the midriff.

Attaching the skirt to the bodice/midriff.

Pinking an edge. One day I will be able to afford a serger…

Where the magic happens…

Almost done!

I apologize for the blurry pics…they were taken on my phone’s camera. Better pics will be included in the final post to document the completed dress. The only things left to do are to sew the back seam, put in the zipper, and hem the dress!

-Sydney

Rosy Posey Dress: Pattern Making and Cutting

Click to View at New Look's Website

When I originally set out making this dress, I had every intention of drafting my own pattern for it. However, once I began working on a draft for the pattern, things were just not going as I intended. So, I poked around in my collection of patterns that I’ve amassed over the years and found a mix-and-match pattern that had all the elements of the Rosy Posy Dress (if you’re not familiar with mix-and-match patterns, they come with a bunch of pieces that can be mixed and matched into several different designs and they’re very cool). The pattern I’m using for this project come from New Look, pattern number 6774. I have had this pattern for quite sometime, and I believe it’s the pattern I used to make the base of a pirate costume one year, but I digress.

Some facts about the pattern, for those who are interested in that type of thing:

• I’m using parts A, J, and L for this dress.
• There are a total of 7 pattern pieces in this dress.

Now that I’m using a manufactured pattern for this dress, cutting it out is pretty straightforward. The most complicated part will be altering the bodice using both colors of fabric.

That’s all for now! Next will be construction of the dress!

-Sydney

Update!

Greetings!

I’ve decided to make a quick post to say that the DIY Fashionista project hasn’t been forgotten! If anyone out there is reading, I have not abandoned this blog. I’m simply going to have to be on hiatus now that I’m a full-time college student once again, and I’m living in residence sans sewing machine.

I will be back over Winter Break, throughout the month of December, and then of course over the summer. I’ll be picking the Rosy Posy dress project back up, hopefully to be completed by the end of Winter Break. I think this blog could be a really great experiment in fashion, and I’m super excited to make this journey!

-Sydney

Rosy Posy Dress: Fabric and Cost

In my previous post, I touched a little on the fabric that I’d chosen for my recreation of ModCloth’s Rosy Posy Dress. The fabrics I bought were purchased at JoAnn Fabric, which is one of three fabric stores local to me (one is the one remaining WalMart with a fabric department, and the other is Hobby Lobby).

Main fabric: I chose a deep red calico floral fabric that is listed on my receipt as “Burgundy w/ Roses,” which is what I’ll be calling it for the remainder of this project.

• I purchased 2 yards at the 30% off price of $3.49 a yard, for a savings from the regular price of that fabric of $3.00.
• The fabric is a light-weight cotton blend, and is a standard 45″

Secondary fabric: Instead of the cream floral fabric in the original dress, I chose a light pink floral fabric.

• It unfortunately only came in pre-cut “Fat Quarters” (typically used for quilting) measuring in at 18″ by 21″ each. I bought 4 of these (read: all that JoAnn’s had in stock).
• These are also a light-weight cotton blend.
• These were $1.29 per roll, and I saved $0.52 on one of them (40%) with a coupon.

Additional Materials Purchased:

• One 9″ zipper in “Barbary Red” that I got for half off regular price: $1.00

Total savings so far: $4.52
Total spent so far: $13.43

Additional materials that I will be using that I already have:

• Burgundy solid fabric for lining; light-weight cotton blend
• Light pink solid fabric for lining; light-weight cotton blend
• Thread
• Hook and Eye

That about covers it as far as materials and cost, I believe, and I don’t think that I will have to purchase anything extra, so I am going to go ahead and call this project at $13.43! I will also be logging my hours to work out some sort of addition labor costs, because someone had to make these dresses to sell!

But that’s it for now!
-Sydney

p.s. My next entry will be my first progress update on this dress: Pattern selection and modification! See you then!

First Project: Rosy Posy Dress

My inaugural project as a DIY Fashionista is this dress from ModCloth.com, The Rosy Posy Dress!

 

Photo: ModCloth, ModCloth.com

This dress ranks in at a whopping $110 at ModCloth, and unfortunately is currently sold out. I’ve decided that for each project from a store, I’m going to take a look at what reviewers are saying about the garment, and see if any of their comments/concerns are relevant to my recreation of the garment. Hopefully this makes more sense when I get to it, haha.

1. The first thing that I noticed was that a lot of reviewers made mention to the fact that the dress didn’t seem to be worth the price to them. This is an easy thing for me to work in and fix, because part of my whole deal here is to recreate these dresses for less!
2. Second complaint I found was that the dress doesn’t do much for busty girls (and I am one of those!) because it doesn’t have darts or anything to give the bodice shape. While I’m working on my version of the bodice, I will see what I can do about this shape issue.
3. One reviewer made mention of the fact that the straps didn’t work with a regular bra (a busty girl must-have, in my opinion), so I will have to look into this as well.

Other than that, most loved the dress because of its flirty appeal and cute floral print, and frankly, that’s why I love it too. It seems like the perfect first project, and a great way to celebrate Springtime.

Let’s get down to the nitty gritty… the dimensions of the original dress:

• Length: Ranged from 38” (XS) to 38.5″ (L)

Changes that I know for sure that I will be making:

• Smocked back: The original dress features a smocked back. Personally, I’m not a fan of this aspect of the design, so I am opting to use a zipper closure.
• Fabric colors: The original dress features two colors of calico fabric in a floral print; a pink rose color and a cream color. Obviously, I’d be hard pressed to find fabric that was exactly like the original, and that kind of feels like dress plagiarism a bit, and that’s not what I’m going for at all. I found two fabrics that are quite similar, in my opinion; for the pink rose color I have a deep wine floral print fabric, and for the cream color I opted for a light pink floral fabric. These two fabrics are quite complimentary and I’m very anxious to see how it all will work out.

Here’s the link to the original dress again: http://www.modcloth.com/Womens/Dresses/-Rosy-Posy-Dress

-Sydney

p.s. My next blog entry will be a more in-depth look at the fabrics that I’ve chosen (with pictures!) and I’ll start calculating cost of this project! See you next time!

 

 

 

Welcome to DIY Fashionista!

As the name implies, this blog is a chronicle of my forray into being a DIY Fashionista. I started collecting clippings of clothes that I really loved, but couldn’t afford (poor college student here), a while back. This eventually developed into a corollary word document about 10 miles long of copy-and-pastes from different websites. As I was adding my newest droolies from ModCloth.com the other day, something occurred to me: Why was I documenting all of these clothes and not actually making any of them yet? This occurence fortunately was in conjuction with a mess of coupons I had for JoAnn Fabric’s spring sale event, so I hauled my happy butt down there (with no real goal in mind, have you) and ended up purchasing some beautiful maroon calico fabric they had that was on sale. Once I got home, I noticed that the fabric closely resembled one of the dresses in my word document (more on that in my first project post). I made a second trip, another coupon in hand, and procured the rest of the necessary components for that dress.

And then, as all fun internet stories go, I decided to record it for myself and for posterity. So, here we go!

-Sydney