Pattern 1137 - the black dress

Now for the black dress ...
I don't think this dress is particularly difficult to make, but is a bit time consuming.

It is made up of three separate pieces.

A sleeveless long dress.

A midriff top with looped fringe sewn to the bodice and wrist.

And the feather shoulder thing.

It took some trial and error, but I worked out the best placement for the fringe so the lines would get a bit wider over the bust and become narrower at the sides and especially at at the center front.

I recommend pushing and then pinning the fringe away from the stitching lines. Otherwise it will get all caught up in the seams, which won't look nice.

You can see I used a black vinyl crocodile patterned fabric, kind of an odd choice, but it looked the best of all the fabrics I could find. Maybe you will find something better.

The next patterning challenge was to get the open collar of the shoulder thing to hug the neck. I made the upper side out of black duck cloth because I thought it would take the glue better for all the feathers.

I looked at so many websites to find these feathers. And now I can't even find the invoice to tell you where I got these, but I bought these about 9 months ago and I bet the supply of feathers has changed. I recommend doing a general internet search for black feathers or black iridescent feather. 

These are dyed turkey feathers that have a slight iridescent sheen to them. But, they weren't quite exactly the right thing. But, I made them work.


Good old Marietta Greene, who has guest blogged here, found some good feathers at Paper Mart.


Here is the link.

They are really too long and narrow. I found having many short pieces worked better than leaving them whole. So, I carefully clipped them into 2 or 3 sections each, saving the end pieces for important places.

See how the feather piece on the right is split at the bottom. That kind of piece works fine in the center sections, but the actual feather end on the left I used on the outside edge.

I cut and prepared many pieces before getting started. Every feather is different and I wanted to be able to plan where each piece would work best.

Gluing these on is kind of like shingling a roof.  Start at the edges and work towards the center lapping each new layer over the previous one.

Like this.

Then it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't be working flat. This needs to curve over and hug the shoulders. When all the glue dried, maybe it would make the whole piece stiff and flat, so I took my seam roll and pinned it to my sleeve board for a support.

And finished the feathers while it was laying over that.

Here is the front view. See how I have the feathers on the edge stick out a little beyond the fabric to give a feathery soft edge. 

When I was finished, I closely examined the whole piece and looked for ugly, bald or gluey places.

I kept in reserve some of my best feather pieces just for this purpose.  They were delicately fit into all the spots that needed some TLC.

So ... that's my story for this black dress. I hope this pattern will be useful one.