Flora & Fauna

At first I was very nervous to reach the construction process of the actual garment itself as I haven’t had much experience with sewing, however I began slowly and with the easiest part of my garment so that I could acclimatise myself to the sewing machine.

I came up with the idea to repurpose and upcycle a piece of clothing from a charity shop earlier in the process of designing my garment and found a sleeveless knitted vest which matched the texture and colour that I had intended to use for the skin tight arm and leg warmers it also had stretch to it which was perfect for making sure the clothing had that skin tight finish that I wanted. I measured it around somebody’s arm and cut it out to the appropriate size to sew into a sleeve and did the same for the leg warmers but around somebody’s leg.

When it came to which fabric I would potentially use for the dress itself I was undecided at first on what I should use. Originally I had planned to use some sort of stretch fabric so that I could make the dress easily skin tight however I settled on a silk that didn’t have any stretch to it which lead to changes being made in the construction of the garment.

The process of making the dress took some time to experiment with. I started by using a vintage dress pattern which was very straight forward in shape and sewed the dress. I then had to consider ways to style and edit the look to fit the look that I desired. I created a thing strap belt which would cinch the waist and also cut a diagonal in the bottom of the dress, gathering the dress at the higher side to create more shape.

I decided that I wanted the bottom to have more shape and volume to it, so I created a longer belt which I would tie at the highest side of the bottom of the dress so that it could drape. I also styled the garment so that the sleeves would be falling off of the shoulders which I felt complimented the dress more and made it more flattering. The previous belt was also repurposed into a strap for the neck which could also be used as a tie.