kluublog

ONE - Painful Experience

I still haven’t thought of a name for this dress…


It was intially called “One - Construction Worker” and then I was thinking maybe… “One - Farmer”... but yeah… it looks nothing like a farmer or a construction worker now… so I am like.. *shrugs*

Anyway.. the experience of this dress…. I actually started to make this dress halfway through making “ONE - Ballerina”. I was going to incorporate this with the bodice of ONE ballerina but just thought… nah it’s not gonna happen.

Anyway.. (hrm… anyway again..) lol..


I started off with one 2 metre piece of fabric. It was on sale and I thought, this would be the perfect piece of fabric to make a dress for new years… (that didn’t happen)..

I started of just chucking it on the stand and just twisting things here and there. I actually had some sort of design in my head, thinkin of it to bunch up on the side and be all cool and stuff.

(i’m really lazy tonight eh? All my paragraphs start of with the same words.. lol)



I wrapped the stand with the fabric, and just literally twisted things without thinking anything. Pinning here, pinning there.. It was kinna looking really cool! Like a neatly wrapped xmas present.

The first step would probably have been to hand sew (yes, hand sew, again!) all the little “flower” like twirls that I created.



Then after that I started to do something really daring.. I cut the bottom bit off!! ARGH!! before I did that, i pinned down the creasy bits and made sure it was what I wanted before I cut it off!

Why you ask?

Because, intially the fabric is not put on the stand horizontally, it was put on kinna on a slant, so that I would get a better drape and the twirls would be a little more uneven.



Sometimes things don’t have to be perfectly symmetrical for it to look good ya know!



(If my fashion lecturers read this… once again they would be like.. OMG.. LOL… I do remember how to pattern make!! I do!!)




So after I cut the bottom bit off, i repositioned it to fit with the top bit, and sewed right across that seam. That seam became the waist line.

I then hand sewed the waist line section a bit to create a kind of faux waistband.. which is just a nice term for…. “I was too lazy to do the waistband properly, and didn’t have enough fabric, so that’s what it looks like now……. ”

lol



so now the bottom part is in. The top bit is sort of in. Now what? Buttons. Snap buttons, for easy access!



Ok snap buttons in. now what? Armholes perhaps? LOL




As I only just wrapped the piece of fabric around the stand, there is actually no where for armholes… So i was thinking.. What to do now? I thought.. Maybe I should just cut a full circle where the arms are meant to be… kept thinking and thinking… then I thought.. AHH!!

*light bulb*

Maybe I’ll just cut a semi circle.. that should work right?

No it didn’t.. I ended up just cutting a damn full circle. LOL.

It didn’t work because there wasn’t enough room to fit an arm in there.. I was gonna use the semi circle to do something creative with the sleeve, but I cut too far back.. and it just didn’t work….




All apart of experimenting yall!




After armholes it was the neckline. This was a pain in the neck. LOL. No seriously, this was a bitch. It took me a long ass time to figure it out..

I think halfway through, I gave up and worked on the bottom half of the dress.. which was ALSO A NIGHTMARE!

You see.. when working with chiffon, you think, the sky’s the limit.. you can do whatever twisting, pleating, folding, whatever.. but at the same time.. sometimes being too fluid and too spontaneous gets you in a rut.



It took a me freaking long time to work out HOW I was going to make the bottom bit balance out with the top. Also, had to worry about the aesthetics of the dress and make sure how it was going to look good.

I tried so many attempts.. finally got it ok.. pulled it off the stand, started to hand sew everything.. and you know what.. it changed again! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!

Loose fabric rolls all over the freakin place! and then when other people touch it and pick it up… it goes all over the place. Freaking hell!





So I put in the finishing touches.. hand sewed the neck, the bottom bit.. some of the arm hole.. some of the hem..




Then I left it there over Chinese New Year… Came back to finish it. Tried it on.. ARGH!!! It was freaking horrible!



So I had to work on it again.. I was sitting there just thinking.. this is one of those dresses that’s like working with MUD and trying to build a sandcastle with it..





No matter how much you try to put more mud on the top and pat it down, it slides back down again. ARGH!





A bit like life really..




I did the best I could really. The best I could.




There’s a lot of shitty things happening in the dress.. But there’s nothing I can do. That’s why a lot of designers don’t work on the stand and don’t do what I did for this dress… It’s really hard to make it work, and even if it did work, it’s really hard to make another one.



So this dress is definitely a ONE OFF!



As for the hem.. LOL.. I fixed it up using a very asian method.. which I will NOT disclose here! LOL…




It’s my own little secret..




So for now.. this dress is DONE!




OMG.. did I tell you that I stabbed my finger again this time!! And it was much more worse… so much more blood.. so much more pain!!  T_T




Anyway.. stay tuned for the ONE -PERSPECTIVE fashion shoots!! Then you will see what people have done with these dresses and what this dress actually looks like!!



What should I call this dress?



ONE - Mezze … LOL And I will explain why tomorrow!