Sewing: Fairy Formal Dress

The design sketch

 This past week or so I've had a bit of breathing room in between completing orders and waiting for fabric to come in for the next ones.  So I of course have decided to sew something!

Not anything practical mind you, not even a lolita sun dress, or mori skirt.  Rather I decided to make a chiffon fairy princess dress.

I find it rather amusing that when I'm not wearing some combination of mori/ lolita/ ect, or historical costume; I apparently want to dress like an extra from Midsummer's Nights Dream.

It's inspired partly by a vintage 70's dress that I saw while blog surfing, and a Moite jumperskirt.

Here is a mock up of the bodice with some icky blue fabric that was donated to the school.

It was surprisingly easy for how complicated the Moite jumperskirt looked.  Just 4 peices of fabric for the "braid".

I ended up using pink.  I would have prefered a mauve-y purple or seafoam color, but pink was what I could get on sale; which was important because of how much fabric I needed.

The skirt consists of a cotton circle skirt with 3 rectangular chiffon skirts layered over it.  The thing is huge!!  Here it is laid out on a table with my glasses and layering "cheat sheet" .  I wanted to do 4 chiffon skirts, but I just ran out of fabric.

Looking back I wish I had used organza instead of chiffon, as the layers just don't have the undulating body the 70's dress does.  Organza seemed like it would be too stiff though, I've never tried to work with it draped like this.  Maybe I needed something between a chiffon or organza?

I think it turned out nice anyway though!

I have to admit that the criss-cross detail and cotton candy pink color made me feel like I was making a dress for a grown up "Lady Lovely Locks"!  I guess thats not a bad thing; she does seem to have style.

I'm planning on wearing it tomorrow to the school's formal dance.  I want to coordinate it with some simple gold tone jewelry to try to make the color more elegant and refined. I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.