Making the twist-front dress

After ten months of officially being in my twenties, it's time to prepare for my twenty-first birthday party. I'm planning on having a marquee/garden party and am getting into dreaming up decorations and ideas. To tell the truth I could very easily get carried away.
I have been really into grey recently, grey is my absolute favourite colour. I also really want to wear something pale blue. But I had no idea on a dress style.
After a crazy weekend in Bristol, my housemate-to-be introduced me to the series Girls. I immediately watched all of the episodes and was entranced by the beautiful Marnie's dress in the season 1 finale.

I love how the twist hugs her figure and immediately had to make it. In blue. Or grey.
I started to search for patterns but found nothing similar until I stumbled across a page in Russian  which had the right kind of idea.
Unfortunately Google translate struggled (possibly due to slang or grammar and spelling - who knows. I don't know Russian) but I started to understand how to construct this kind of garment.
Another Google search found me on a blog with the same pattern manipulation idea. After studying these I began to have a good understanding of what they were trying to achieve.
I stared at Marnie's dress a long while, scribbled on reels of baking parchment, and then I understood. The two pieces were vertical, a seam down the skirt centre hidden by draping. A seam from the centre to the hip (with a pocket in Marnie's version it seems) and a seam on the opposite side from the centre to the armhole.
I began sketching drape lines on a basic dress front pattern.

I then cut out the sections of the pattern, spreading them out and overlayed more paper to trace this shape for both sides of the pattern.

I managed to pin the pieces together getting the right shape for the dress. I really wasn't expecting it to work this well! I still wanted to work out some problems with the pattern so repeated this process with those in mind. I wanted less drape in the skirt centre, and less on the very side panels of the waist. I planned to use habotai in the real dress so the drape would be nicer, also as the skirt ends up on the bias it hangs nicely :)

At this point I decided that the style of this dress wasn't quite what I wanted for my party, so I have moved on to the next plan.
I had fun doing this, and am so happy I managed to figure it out - I'll keep the pattern pieces for when my friends start getting married and I need to whip up a dress to wear, I think this would be perfect in a flowery patterned fabric.

Scientific

I know I've been more seamstress than scientist on this blog recently but I have another blog a little more dedicated to my double life of science. I thought it could document my year in industry and my life away from home as I embark upon the very beginning of my possible science career.

A Girl in the Lab

A Year for Great Britain

I was feeling particularly British this summer and was inspired by the Brother's cider advert, in particular a dress made from a Union Jack:

After looking up the prices of a high-quality flag that wouldn't disintergrate in the wash I decided I would have to make mine from scratch.

It ended up quite different to my original plan but I love it!

I kept the union jack design subtle to avoid any ginger-spice-itis.

I celebrated the Jubilee with champagne, a warm beef winter-warmer, and a Jubilee cheesecake!

I felt very pretty in my dress - plenty of swooshing around.

Fancy That!

So I have been non-stop busy since I started university almost two years ago, but not too busy to sew...
My favourite hobby at uni was to go to fancy dress nights out in homemade costumes, so here is a little collection of them:

First I put together this fox hood and tail costume for the cheerleaders and american footballers foxhunt social. I had to wear my safety goggles to stop the fur getting in my eyes!

I didn't have my sewing machine but I whipped up some Hogwarts-style robes (complete with hood and sleeves) in one evening for less than £2 for the Wingardium Levio-soc social. I got sorted into Ravenclaw with some nifty cauldrons of varying pH and litmus paper.

Next was the cheerleader's Winter Wonderlounge so I made this velvet Santa Claus dress, which I later converted into a more wearable velvet and black lace trim dress.

With the fur from the christmas dress and an old toga-sheet I made this Bjork-style swan dress for the cheerleader Valentine's Noah's Lounge social.

And to finish off I made these Cadbury's easter egg wrapper dresses and a Lindt bunny costume (though I didn't make the golden unitard - that's from ASOS).

I also put together loads of other outfits but with much less sewing involved including - Mulan robes, Minnie Mouse dress, and a 1920's outfit centred around my great-grandmother's dress.

Bristol

"[Learning] promotes one's innate power"

So it's been a while since I've blogged, mainly because I am far too busy with actual chemistry to do it (and a little socialising inbetween), and also because I haven't had much to say.

However to start off a new year I thought I would write a little about my experience at Bristol university... it's been such a busy time that I can't really sum up how it's been other than saying it is brilliant.

I love the city, I think it's absolutely beautiful, infact one of my favourite days was when I had just finished my lab on magnetochemistry (putting things in tubes and measuring their magnetic moments) which took 1/3 of the time set aside for it, and I realised I had lost my jacket. I went down to the porter's desk and asked if him if he had seen my jacket, which he had and he gave it to me, offering me a pair of gloves he had also found. I declined the gloves but couldn't help myself when he offered me sandwiches that the cafe couldn't keep until Monday, so I walked off with a bag worth £9.50 in sandwiches. As I looked out of the glass wall I suddenly noticed it was snowing (this was the first lot of snow England had this winter) and my day just couldn't get any better. Walking to the bus stop I took a shortcut through Royal Fort Lodge gardens which looked amazing in the snow.

Anyway after a couple of weeks I still couldn't get over how beautiful Bristol looks in snow, especially across the Downs in the morning.

I often go through Royal Fort Gardens and the other day I was there with Beth and a squirrel scampered right up to us and eyed us up, perhaps wondering if we would be suitable to climb?

Then we sat on a bench where a robin joined us and kept flitting from end to end of the bench looking at us and singing... but whenever we tried to take a photo it flew away. Wildlife in inner cities is always surprising... they seem so used to people and just so... unfased.

I feel I should add some chemical relevance to this post, so here it is:

I have just revised all of my quantum mechanics. It was not fun, but it only took me 2 hours and then I watched a terribly sad episode of House to relax.

I think that's enough for now.

Roar!

One of my A-level textiles projects was based on the self-chosen theme "expressions" I veered off into a musical expression direction and ended up basing my large piece on The Lion King (the musical) but to be different I based my dress on a tiger.

It was actually really fun to make, basically I wrapped some hand-dyed scrim around a mannequin, then used thin strips of silk and other scraps of fabric to create the stripes (and give the wearer a subtle hint of dignity, as the scrim is see-through) These strips lead round to the back, where the dress does up on an off-centre lace up, and down over the orange skirt, which does up with four enevenly spaced, mismatched black buttons at the back.

I would definitely wear it... if ever I'm invited to a tiger party...

I made my sister model it, as I get quite particular about camera angles, otherwise I would have worn it myself. It was great I really got into the hair and makeup side of it backcombing her hair into a wild quiff and giving her a more mature version of the classic tiger face-paint.

Ok, maybe it was quite a standard, albeit sparkly, tiger face-paint.

The best thing was that she let me, she's usually quite particular about messing up her hair, or doing stupid makeup, so all in all I was very lucky.

Although that hair does make her head look weirdly big...

Anyway sorry that I haven't written in a while, my imaginary readers,

A Touch of Toga

I turned 18 on the 7th of July and, following in the footsteps of my brother, held a toga party in my garden.
A few weeks in advance I got stupidly excited one day and made my toga (even though you can easily make one on the day).
So I sat down in my sister's room, which I was sharing due to mine being surrendered to visitors, and I took 3 half sheets left over from my brother's toga party two years ago and fashioned a toga out of them using a Primark t-shirt as the base.
Yesterday, with the aid of my family and friends, I put up a marquee, blew up bunch-of-grapes-balloons, ate chili con carne, and generally got ready.
I seemed to be cheif toga-maker and made/fixed at least 7 people's togas, so it was really lucky that I made mine early in a weird fit of excitement.
The party was really nice, quite mellow compared to the usual parties I hold, but in a nice way.
I went for a full length toga (despite my lovely tanned legs from Tenerife) and wore the gorgeous shoes that my sister bought for my birthday. You can't see much of the toga but it has a pleated neckline and shoulder, a horizontally ruched bodice, overlapping panels on the skirt, and a diagonal hanging drape along the back falling into the skirt.

Toga II was definitely a success.