A Princess Dress - Part II

Now that we have our pattern, it's time to get on with creating the dress! Oh, wait, the skirt, got to show you how to cut that, right? 

First off, a look at the lovely fabrics we'll be using. And enjoy the loveliness, because that Organza is terribly difficult to work with and I highly doubt I'll be using it again until I get my serger. (What's the difference between our favorite sheer fabrics, Organza and Chiffon? Check out here: http://www.ehow.com/about_6623939_fabric_-difference-between-chiffon-organza.html)

Cutting out a skirt is pretty straightforwards. It's basically length and width measurements, cut on a triangular shape.

Make sure that the diagonal line is the same length as the center of the panel! Otherwise the skirt will come out uneaven!

I usually cut out half the skirt, then rotate the piece to serve as a pattern for the other half. This allows me to get maximum use out of the fabric.

A look at the master-book, wherein I keep all information pertaining to each dress and each version I create of the dress for individual customers.

Organza is a nasty fabric when it comes to fraying, so it's absolutely necessary to finish the inside seams. I choose to employ a french seam here.

Remember how I said this fabric was hard to work with? The jewels were gorgeous, but they made for an uneaven seam as shown above. Not super-noticeable, but enough to frustrate my sense of perfection.

The skirt is shown and I decide to demonstrate how lovely it looks flying in the breeze...

Sleeves and skirt!

One thing I often like to do, when I get to a certain level of completion, is lay out all the pieces and get a good idea for how the finished dress will look. Here I'm pretty happy - except for those pesky organza sleeves.

A narrow hem on a diagonal organza seam refuses to lie flat. I ironed and ironed and finally gave up. It was about midnight and I  kept mulling over the problem in bed, until finally I had to get up and do some research on how to hem the sleeves without access to a serger.

In the end I utilized a method that involved folding the fabric over, sewing a zigzag edge twice, and trimming the excess fabric.

Believe it or not, it made for a pretty nice hem!

Original sleeves on the left, new sleeves on the right. See how much nicer they look?

Keep reading over at Part III!