Charles James revisited

After finishing the last gold dress, I have decided to keep working on some great evening gowns, using Charles James as my inspiration. I chose the dress in the picture as an inspiration, and decided to do few version of it in different colors.

The first version is the colors combinations you see in the above photo.

So stay tuned.

I started with a good pattern that I altered to work for the design and being that it was a new draft I made a muslin to check the pattern.

Once I had the the muslin done, I fixed the pattern as needed for a better fit.

I started with the lining, made of gold color silk dupioni. I decided to add the bottom panel to where the shirred fabric will go and not add bulk to the hips thus making the dress too tight.

Charles James was known for his dress construction. He used all kind of materials and support inside the dress in order to give the dress a solid structure.

Working on a small scale presents its challenges. There is only so much adding that can be done to the dress without making it too bulky.

The fabric that I use is silk dupioni, which is kind of stiff and not too light, so I had to come up with something that will work with the weight of the fabric and serve the help with the structure of the dress.

I opted not to spread the seams, but to iron them to one side and then top stitch them.

I crated kind of boning to the structure of the torso without adding anything using the weight of the fabric and stitching to achieve that.

I added some quilt batting to the top of the dress, to give the bust a little structure, then I added red tulle to the bottom of the dress.

I decided that the lining will only be attached at the bust line and the red tulle will be attached to the lining while the rest of the tulle and gold fabric will be attached to the outer shell.