Retrospect: Valentine’s Formal (2017)
I'm not gonna lie: I am so BUMMED I didn't think to take before or after pics on this one! As I wrote in the original FB post (Jan. 20, 2017):
"Valentine's day Dress -
This was also for another neighborhood friend. While the dress fit perfectly, it ended up being too "poofy" in the skirt - and looked more like a bloomer costume when she put it on. (I suspect it was from [combining] too many wide pleats with a relatively thick material)."
For those who may be asking "what in the blue-blazes is a 'Bloomer Costume?'" my only answer is this:
Yes, when Miss Julia's dad first sent me pictures of the dress when it arrived, my mind went immediately to early Suffragettes.
The entire saga of the Bloomer Costume is actually pretty fascinating, but that's a very long story better left for it's own dedicated post. All you really need to know is that it was a clothing choice with the intent of empowering women who still lacked the right to vote...
It was a choice, and we respect their right to choose...
It just wasn't the right choice for Miss Julia.
When I say that this skirt formed pants around her legs, I am being dead-serious: this skirt could have been an amazing exercise in quick-change costuming... had it not been a poorly constructed formal dress!
While I don't have any remnants from the dress anymore, I absolutely remember this gal:
Another online purchase, though I'm not sure which site they bought it from, the bodice was impressively well made and fitted. It was just the skirt that the manufacturers seemed to lose their minds about!
For one thing the fabric was too structured for the design they were going for. What I mean by that is that it wasn't the right choice for pleating. I remember it was some kind of twill, and absolutely polyester (though not to a disgusting degree, for points for that). But this material was so stiff, with such little drape and hand, that I remember thinking how superfluous the pleats were: they could've created the same curved bell-shaped they sold Miss Julia just by cutting the skirt a little differently.
And then there were the pleats themselves...
OH. MY. GOD!
"Valentine's Dress back -
In the end, I decided to go inside the dress and remove four, three inch pleats (two from the front and two from the back). Then, I darted the material and hid the new seams in the pleats that remained so that the resulting lines on the front facing would blend into the folds."
Why, in the crap, would they make such big pleats on this kind of fabric! Why would they make so many big pleats on such a tiny waist!!
Because they chose a very structured material and combined it with both hilariously wide and numerous pleats, rather than a smooth rounded bell-curve, the skirt was literally falling in-between Miss Julia's legs to create this exaggerated pair of pantaloons...
NO ONE wants that for their spring formal!
Ahem... anyway...
Fortunately, and somewhat ironically, because there was such an excess of fabric in the pleats, the solution was very easy find: remove both the number of pleats and their size, by removing the excess of fabric.
"Valentine's Dress side -
This is probably the look the designer of the dress had in mind. In the end, I ended up removing 12 inches of material... seriously, WAY too many pleats. They work better on skirts when used sparingly."
Now I'll admit that I was a bit nervous about this one at first:
Even though I'd already adjusted pleating and gathering before this dress, it had never been this degree (again, I had to cut away 12 inches of extra fabric!). Making these adjustments made me feel more like a mechanic than a seamstress, because I remember keeping the dress on my dress form while seam-ripping, marking, pinning, referring to the measurements on the floor, only to mutter a string of curses when I needed to re-pin, and feeling my arms get tired whenever I needed to baste-stitch a section...
It was a lot of tidying-up through prepping is what I'm saying.
But it always turns the actual sewing into a cake-walk later on.
And I was determined to make sure that Miss Julia actually got the dress she paid for!
So, long story long - I managed to correct the shape of the dress so that it actually matched the picture they showed me when we started. A nice, smooth curve that accentuated the waist and created an overall hour-glass figure...
Miss Julia loved it. And if I recall correctly, she had a great time at her dance that Valentine's Day.
***
Looking back on it, it was pretty lucky that the bodice was so well made; it made the entire reconstruction process so much simpler because, when it was time to close things up, I didn't have to worry about matching measurements by altering the bodice - something that has become the norm now that we're about 10 years further into the age of online-shopping.
It was the skirt that just went kind of bananas with such wacky proportions. But now, as I recall that job, I can't help but wonder if that was by design?
