A silk dress fit for a princess!

Every girl wants to be a princess sitting in a castle in a beautiful dress and waiting for her prince to come. As I grew up, I came to understand that such fairy-tales were nonsense (look at what happened to Kate Middleton), but a beautiful dress never did anyone any harm! A proper ‘princess dress’ should be made of gorgeous silks and flowing through the air.

Like many of you, silks inspire nothing but fear in me. In October, I’ll attend a week-long workshop with Susan Khalje and my main goal is to become friends with silks. But before the workshop, I intend to work on some garments and get used to these nasty creatures. During one of my recent trips, I acquired this beautiful crepe-de-chine with the idea of transforming it into a princess dress. Also, a friend’s wedding was approaching and so the pieces of my challenge came together. Now I only had to take it on!

This Burda dress was the winner of my ‘princess dress’ contest for many reasons. 1. I had always wanted to own a silk maxi dress. 2. Due to heart surgery in my childhood and a huge scar crossing half of my back, I was scared of dresses with open backs and hardly owned any. 3. Any princess would die for it!

Fabric: 3.5m of crepe-de-chine
Size: 36 for the top and 38 for the skirt
Cost: $18 (yesssss, I scored some great fabric on sale)
Modifications to pattern: none

What I learnt from this project: patience!I Besides spending two weeks to complete the dress, I discovered not only how to tame silks but also myself. But let’s start from the beginning!

Challenge #1: cutting on bias. Silk should not be cut folded in half, but as a single layer of fabric to prevent slippage or distortion. You can see from the technical drawing that the main skirt piece is quite large. None of the tables in my apartment is big enough for cutting, so I had to lay the fabric on the floor. Did I sweat or have cramps? Oh yes, I did! All of the pieces from the fashion fabric and lining were cut on the floor. Holy Moly! How happy I was when it was over!

Challenge #2: thread and needle. Most of the sources that I’d consulted before starting the project suggested using cotton or polyester thread for silks. But for some reason, none of it worked when I tested it on swatches of the fabric beforehand. Silk thread worked much better. The Mircotex needle which I used performed miracles; no complaints!

Challenge #3: assembly. I assembled the dress in two stages: the bust pieces, and the skirt with godet. Once the skirt had been sewn together and the godet attached to it, I let it hang on a mannequin for a day to stretch and adapt to its new shape. In fact, having read Marina’s article since, I should have let the skirt and the godet hang separately before assembling them. I will definitely do so next time.

Challenge #4: zipper. As a result of being lazy and not wanting to attach the zipper by hand,  I had to rip the seams and re-attach it three or four times. Bad idea! In some places, the fabric got stretched and puckered a little bit.

Another issue I faced with the zipper: a piece of fabric in the middle curls over and I have no idea why. I shortened the top of the skirt from both ends of the zipper, but the issue remains! Do you know what could have caused it?

You can see on this photo how the fabric curls over ;(

I picked black batiste as lining, which was one of the materials suggested by the experts. The end of the skirts were serged. I used three threads on my four-thread serger and the lower dial. This technique curled the hem and I achieved the desired ‘princess dress’ effect.  Since I don’t like wearing skirts too long, I made the dress so that it just reaches my ankles.

Lastly, when I tried to play around with the bust pieces, I came up with an alternative way of wearing the dress. Instead of tying the straps behind the neck, I let them go over my shoulders, cross over on the back and tie a knot in front.

New Look :P

Having conquered this challenge (despite a few hiccups along the way), I would say, sew with silks and make yourself princess dresses!

P.S.If you happen to be in New York mid-October and feel like going fabric shopping together, let me know! I could be fun!