A-LINE DRESS

One of the projects that has been taking much of my time is an A-line dress I was working on for a client.  I had to make the pattern and construct the dress.  She actually found a (Calvin Klein) sleeveless dress on-line and liked much of the style, but wanted her dress to have sleeves and more length; from just above the knee to about mid-calf.

 It was quite the project actually since it has a total of 24 panels; 12 in the front, and 12 in the back with an invisible zipper.  The original was fully lined, which she wasn't too concerned over.  So, I added facings to the neckline and bypassed the lining altogether.   I was caught off guard by the amount of fabric it took; in fact, I needed to call her to pick up additional yardage.  I wish I would have had a way to know that the typical 3 yards of 60" wide fabric was going to fall well short of what we needed.   But, there was really no way for me to know until I started laying out the pattern pieces.   In fact, it took darn close to double that amount!  The hemline of the finished garment is over 100 inches in circumference so the panels really ate up the fabric with funny little wedges of waste left behind.  Anyway, here's the Calvin Klein "knock-off"!  It's a beautiful plum colored stretch gabardine.  Nice drape and reasonably wrinkle-free.