This year I got to go to my first ever Dapper Day at Disneyland! As some of you know, I have lived in Southern California for almost a year now and was very excited to join the Annual Pass family! One of the events that I had always admired from afar was Dapper Day! Disney and everyone dressing to the nines? Count me in! I had an absolute blast with my friends Lauren (The Homemade Pinup, who also made her adorable dress for our outing) and Emily (an outstanding cast member and costumer) - we were at the park for nearly 14 hours of fun! I am still amazed since I decided to make my dress the night before and was running on 1.5 hours of sleep! Myself, Laruen, and Emily - thank you to the kind woman who offered to take our picture! You read that right - I started my dress THE NIGHT BEFORE! I got the idea on Friday morning to create a Disneybound look to wear the next day for the outing. I've recently been working with Gertie's latest pattern - Butterick B6453 and just knew this dress was screaming to become a princess. Luckily I was heading up to the Garment District in LA for other sewing supplies and decided I would leave my fate to the fabric overlords. If I found fabric that would work I would attempt the dress in one night. My quick idea sketches on leftover bridal notes (still great for to do lists after the wedding)! Well, I walked into the second store that day because I spied a cute pink gingham - and bam! Right there was a ton of different colors of a light weight cotton blend for $2 a yard. They had every color I needed! I got fabric for a Briar Rose dress and Princess Aurora's pink dress - plus the pink gingham I originally spotted and some mint to make two more casual dresses. So when I got home in the evening I threw caution to the wind and started cutting out fabric. I mostly followed the pattern, but did a fully lined bodice instead of facings and created a lining of white, lace-hemmed fabric for the skirt in addition to my bodice detail modification. I wanted to share how I created the bodice detail because it was super easy and was basically the reason anyone recognized the dress as Briar Rose inspired! The Dress Construction:The first thing I did was trace the center front bodice pattern onto pattern paper and decide the triangular shape I wanted to cut out for the detail. After drawing that line and making sure there was still seam allowance, I took a piece of 1mm thick painter's tarp (which I use for most of my pattern pieces) and traced the triangular shape of the bodice I was planning on cutting out. I made sure that had seam allowance too before cutting my fabric. All of my cut bodice pieces - 4 backs, 4 side fronts, 1 original front, 1 modified front, 1 bodice detail. Next I used the sleeve pattern piece to cut out the part that will criss-cross and sewed it according the pattern. Then cut them to size and pinned it onto the bodice detail piece. Then I lined it up to one side of the bodice front piece, pinned to make sure it all stayed in place, and sewed it down. Next was to clip the point of the bodice detail and clip down the point of the bodice front so that I could flip/fold the pieces and line up the other side and sew it down too. So this is the hard part to explain without a video to show, but I flipped the bodice detail piece to the other side of the bodice front, folded the bodice piece, and put right sides together again for the unsewn side. (I pretty much just sat there and tried folding and lining it all up until I found the correct way.) Then, guess what? I sewed that side down. Then gave it a press and voila! Briar Rose! I sewed the rest of the dress pretty closely to the pattern. I pretty much doubled up the skirt and the lining and gathered them together and hand stitched the lining down along the sides and waist on the inside to cover the zipper and skirt seam allowances. Summing the project up:All in all, I was super proud of the dress and had a blast wearing it to Dapper Day. However, in my haste I didn't spend much time checking fit so my bodice ended up being pretty big on me - something I'll definitely need to go back and adjust for future wear. I'll also want to go back and shorten the outer skirt layer just a tad so that the white lace can peek out.
I think if I were to make this dress again I would only gather the outer layer of the skirt and make the skirt lining a circle skirt shape to cut down on bulk at the waistline seam.
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