retroberry: Silk Slip Dress

Hey, everyone! I went to my friend's wedding in mid-July, and as the cheapskate and sewer I am, I decided to make a dress for it!

I had this light pink silk fabric that I bought a couple months ago for a poorly planned cosplay, so I decided to use that. I've also been wanting a slip dress recently so I decided to go for that!

Materials:

- 1 yd of silk fabric

- 1 yd of matching lining fabric

- thread of a similar color

I got all my materials at Joann Fabrics. If you go there, I recommend using coupons!!

Okay, so first I made a pattern.

I was lazy and knew I didn't want to add a zipper, so I made my pattern to fit around my chest all the way through. I also drew the shape I wanted on a piece of paper before making the pattern.

For the pattern, measure your chest, hips, where you want your neckline, where you want the armholes to end, and where your waist is.

**The lower you make your neckline, the easier it will be to take the dress on and off.**

Next, I folded my silk and lining fabric to figure out how I will cut out all the pieces. I realized that when I folded my silk four ways, the skirt part would not be as wide as I would like, so I cut my pattern at the waist and decided to do the top first.

I folded my lining fabric in half n then folded that in half. I put my top pattern on the fabric with the center side of the pattern on the side of the fabric that's folded twice, not the edge side.

Pin the pattern and cut it out with seam allowances. Also, leave some more space for the straps to leave some room for adjustment.

When you pull open your newly cut piece, you'll just need to sew one side together n that will be your top lining.

This is what it looks like pinned. Don't sew the top of the straps together yet. I did that and ended up seam ripping them open again later.

Sew that one side and repeat these past few steps for your silk fabric.

Here's the silk cut out and pinned. You should work with silk with the wrong side out.

Okay next, make sure the straps are pinned and try on the lining right side out and the silk wrong side out. You need to pin and sew the darts on your chest to make it more fitted there.

Here's my silk top with darts sewed. To me, darts are a really sucky, and I basically guess where to pull the fabric and pin. I have no method haha.

Okay, so the next part after you do the darts is to pin the lining to the silk. I had some trouble figuring out how to do this exactly, because you want both darts to be facing each other when it's done.

You want to put the lining over the wrong side of the silk. The darts of the silk and the darts of the lining should both be outside. You can check your pin placement by flipping the fabric right side out.

When you're done sewing them together, trim your seam allowances where needed. Make sure you have NOT sewn the tops of your straps yet!!!!!!!!!

Trim the curves and the corners. Don't cut too closely to your sewn line though because the silk with run and you don't want that!!! After I trimmed some, I had to go back and sew another line because I trimmed too closely.

TIP: Right before I was going to wear it for the wedding, I noticed one of the straps' seams had opened. I suggest leaving very wide seams and maybe even sewing two lines of seams, maybe 1/4th inch apart, so that this won't happen to you. It's very annoying.

Okay, so next, flip your top right side out, pin the straps, and try it on!!

I pinned really closely to the end of the silk, so I didn't have much wiggle room for adjustments.

To sew the straps, you cud use the machine, but I wanted it to be an invisible stitch. So, I handsewed my straps together, which was a little annoying but worth it.

So, that's the top done for now!

Next, I saw that the rest of my silk fabric was smaller than the lining fabric, so I decided to make the skirt part with my silk first.

This is the amount of fabric I had. I folded it different ways to find the best way to break up my fabric to fit my pattern.

I ended up cutting it this way.

Next, I put the pieces on top of each other. I actually tried to pleat the fabric to see if it would look good, and I didn't like it. So I wanted to aim for an a-line skirt for this dress.

I folded the two pieces in half together and put my pattern on top.

I didn't want to pin the silk since it starts to create runs in the fabric, so I held my pattern on with slightly weighted objects around me.

During the cutting, I only followed the length and waist. I cut a diagonal line from the waist to the corner of the fabric. I also evened out the bottom of my fabric compared to the pattern.

Then, I sewed up the sides!

Then, I pinned it to my top, seam facing the inside of my dress.

I sewed that. Then, I pinned my bottom hem and sewed that.

I tried it on to see how it looked, and it was pretty good! So, I moved on to the lining.

I put my lining fabric up to the skirt to see where I should cut.

I cut my remaining lining fabric in half long ways, folded my two pieces in forths, and put my pattern on top.

I didn't follow the pattern fully. I only followed the bottom of the skirt pattern and pinned where the top ended.

Then, I cut a straight line from the top mark to the bottom mark leaving seam allowances.

Then, I laid it on top of my dress flipped inside out to see if everything lined up. It didn't, so I moved my pins closer in and cut my seam allowance thinner.

I sewed up the sides, then pinned the skirt lining to the top lining. During this part, I wanted my seam to face outward, so that the lining seams and outer layer seams would be facing each other. I didn't end up doing that by mistake. So, keep watch where this seam faces before you sew it.

^See, this is where I should have realized I pinned the seam the wrong direction. The seam should be facing toward me, not inside.

So, I sewed that seam. After realizing my mistake too late, I decided to top stitch my seam to prevent any runs.

I also top stitched my silk waist seam.

Next, I tested top-stitching the top of the dress. I did only one armhole before realizing it was not the look I wanted. It was too flat for me, and the shape my fabric was in was too wavy for this to look good.

So, after pulling out that seam, I needed to get the wrinkles out of my dress. As you can see two pictures above, the fabric was super wrinkly. I thought that a dry cleaner could do the trick without me risking the fabric under an iron. Unfortunately, the one dry cleaner I know about in my town is under construction right now, and I couldn't find any of the others I saw on Google.

So, I decided to iron my dress. I looked online for the best way to do it. I saw that it wasn't a very good idea, so I was super nervous. Luckily, I have this super great iron, a Shark model Gi568N. I put it on the second lowest heat setting and made sure there was enough water in for steam. I ended up ironing and constantly steaming my dress with a flat, thin towel in between.

It turned out very well. No melting happened that I know of. I think a steamer would have been easier to use, but I worked with what I had.

It was finally completed! I tried it on with the accessories I would wear at the wedding to figure out my hair style! Hehe