the prom dress

It's been a wild two weeks between gardening, car troubles, and out-patient surgery for my younger sister. Sister Suzy's dress was finished 5:00 am Saturday. The mask was designed and finished a couple of hours before prom on Saturday. It was a masquerade themed ball.



Sister Suzy went fabric shopping with me on the 1st of April. The lace fabric for the bolero jacket was found first. Then she carried it around trying it with different fabrics. She liked the black dull satin best. We looked at taffeta but she thought it was too noisy. I thought a shiny satin would work best for the sash. She decided on school colors.



We used Simplicity patterns 2440 and 2442 to make the dress. The skirt and sash are from 2440; the bodice and jacket are from 2442. The jacket was suppose to be lined but I didn't want to distract from the lace so I made facings and added 1/4 inch red piping around the edges and sleeves. I raised the front of the bodice one-inch for more coverage. And completely reworked the sash. The red band at the bottom of the dress is there for two reasons; in the beginning I thought it might add some visual interest, in the end because I forgot to measure the skirt length I was two inches short of the dress being long enough.

Simplicity had designed a long sash that went around the mid-riff and tied in the back with no interfacing. It looked very, very sad! So I made a cummerbund with interfacing. Then went out on the web and looked at some sites on how to tie bows. I found one on how to tie bows for hair barrettes. Using their examples I interfaced the middle 24 inches of the bow, made 3 sets of pleats, 1 set in the middle and the other 2 sets 12 inches either side of center. Stacked them up, sewed them together and then made the band that covers the middle of the bow. Then I sewed the bow onto the cummerbund. It looks much more polished!



There she is ready to go!