Finally Revealed: Self-Drafted Shaner Dress

This passed weekend, two of my beloved friends got hitched to each other and I wanted to have a nice original dress for their wedding. Enters the Shaner Dress. I am calling this dress The Shaner Dress in honor of my two friends. They are pretty awesome people and I am so happy for them.

Okay, so let’s talk a little about the process of making this dress.

Last semester I designed the above dress in my Flat Patternmaking class. The mini dress received a good response and some people wanted me to make them one. I got my invite for the wedding and knew this would be a great dress for the wedding. As soon as the semester was over, I started making my own custom sloper. The process of making the slopers were a nightmare and I still not really done. You can see most of the process on instagram, click on the link at the end of the post. I was so serious about this, that I had a fitting done at a restaurant.

In the middle of last month, I moved to a new apartment (and official done with my old place Monday). You can see where this is going. My teacher kept telling me that I knew what I was doing and I just need some confidence. She thought I was going to be done in time for the wedding, until 2 weeks ago when she realized how anal I am about pattern making and that I really had no help with fitting things except for the few minutes I got to see her. She was a little worried about me. After that I went off to my own devices and just started working on the pattern and making some design changes.

Changes I made:

Sleeves that I loved to sleeveless
Removing darts from the skirt
Having the band only in the front

I originally wrote out a long drawn out version of what happened, but who wants to read all that. So here are the cliffnotes:

Started cutting the dress in the fashion fabric on Friday, insanity allowed me to agree to hemming pants. Everything was smooth sailing until I thought I screwed up on the dress, so I went to bed ripping out the neckine. Next morning, hemmed pants while cussing, did a walk-through of old apartment and went to buy a invisible zipper. Had lunch dropped off by friend in exchanged for hemmed pants. Realized that I did not need to rip out the neckline but the back skirt seam to turn in/out the lining. BullShhh, the waist and skirt parts since I still had yet to figured that out in my muslin stage. Started sewing the zipper, breaking the needle shortly before I had a little melt down, which told me it was time to shower. Finished the zipper, sew all the seams, serge the hem of the skirt and decided it looked done but not too sure about that hem. By the time my friend came by, I put another dress on. She convinced me that my hem was fine and the dress looked great so I wore it to the wedding. Everyone loved it and was shocked that I made it in less than 24 hours. The wedding was great, I was buzzed before the ceremony and I did a lot of dancing.

Cliffnotes done

It is amazing what I get done with deadlines, but yet take forever when I don’t. Perhaps I need to give myself more deadlines. Tho, my interiors for this dress needs attention. Especially the raw seams will ALL need to be serge. The fabric was mostly easy to work with besides the fraying but the lining was a pain. I have a lot of extra fabric of the polka dot, I might just make a summer top out of it. What do you think?

Here are some more pictures of the dress. Sorry for the quality.

I forgot to add interfacing to the band which is why it is a little baggy in that areas.

Check out that invisible zipper. I highly suggest getting a invisible zipper foot that is specific to your machine over the generic ones.

In conclusion this was an interesting project and there are somethings I still need to work on to make if fully finished. However, right now I am taking it easy and slowly unpacking. I do look forward to making more self-drafted patterns.

What are you up too?