Dress #4 -Blue Spirograph

I found this wonderful, patterned chiffon fabric. It reminded me of the Spirograph I played with as a kid.

Then I found a blue Lycra that matched the color.
Then after I bought the fabric, I started designing the dress.

Above is Version 1. It was okay but there was just something… well… boring about it.
So a few days later after it fermented in my brain a while (and the competition got closer without any dress being started), I drew up Version 2.

I liked this version a lot better.
So I started on the pattern.
I used Kwik Sew pattern #3331 as a starting base. Dress A had set in sleeve so I moved up the neckline and lengthened the sleeves.

For the bodysuit, the top portion of pattern A was cut out of nude-colored mesh and the bottom “panty” was cut out of the blue Lycra.
Once I had the bodysuit cut out of fabric, I drew on the bodice pattern for the straps I wanted on the top of the dress.

I laid the dress bodice on top of the bodysuit and appliquéd around the straps and neckline of the dress using a zig-zag stitch (3 wide x 1.5 long). I stopped appliqué 1-2” from the side seam. Those edges would be appliquéd down later after the bodysuit and dress side seam are done.
To do the bodysuit side seams, I pinned the dress bodice out of the way.

Once the bodysuit side seams were in, the dress sides seams could be done.

Here is what version 2 looked like.

I didn’t like all that mesh at the shoulders and around the neck. It looks odd. When I tried the dress on, I felt like a little old lady!
And when I lifted my arms to dance position, the shoulder area wrinkled. UGH!
I thought that attaching the gloves would prevent the problem of always having to pull at the tops of the gloves. This solutions was obviously not the correct one!

So back to the seam ripper…

I removed the gloves from the dress and cut away all mesh at the neckline.
I kept the mesh in the cutaway windows as I felt they were needed structurally to hold the dress together.

The weight of this dress was a lot pulling on the one shoulder strap. After trying the dress on, I added a strap at the other shoulder.

Here are views of the sewn dress (modeled by “Gertrude”). The dress was getting glitzed up with sequins.

The front is finished here. The back would still get sequins going down the 2 major straps in the back.
The combination of sequin placement and the way the holographic silver sequins caught the light was just the right glitz and sparkle.


The 8MM Spotlight Silver Sequins (ordered online from www.sequinsdirect.com ) were US$13 for a bag of 6,000 sequins. I used about a third of the bag.
I glued each sequin on with E6000 just like a rhinestone would have been.
After seeing the dress up close, one person told me she thought it looked like rhinestones from the dance floor.
What a great compliment and a lot less expensive than rhinestones.

Here you can see how well the sequins sparkled under the lights of the dance floor. These photos were taken during a foxtrot with one of our dance instructors.