Tag: Silk Baron

Renaissance’s Celestial Purple Prom Dress (McCall’s 7091)

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Alright, as promised, a debriefing on Renaissance’s prom dress:

Pattern

McCall’s #7091, discontinued but available online as a PDF file.

Caution: It’s a batch of three downloads with up to sixty pages in each download that you have to tape together. An A0 printing option is NOT available. It took me four hours to tape the one hundred and twenty-seven pages together.

Materials

Dupioni Silk in colorway “Comet Tail” (5 yards), Shantung Silk in colorway “Nolana” (4 yards), and Batiste Silk/Cotton in colorway “Apparition” (2 yards). All three were purchased from Silk Baron.

Working with silk is a lovely experience. I opted to do all of my cutting of the fabrics with a pinked rotary blade in order to cut down on fraying, and that was an excellent choice.

I will not use the Batiste Silk/Cotton as a lining in the future because it has too loose of a weave and stretched and grew like crazy inside the dress, causing the neckline to sag more and more as Renaissance wore it. It’s a beautiful fabric and I want to make more things from it in the future, but it’s not well-suited to give structure to a garment.

Notions

  • Thread: Aurifil 50 weight #2780 when piecing “Comet Tail,” Superior Threads’ Pima 50 weight #8035 when piecing “Nolana,” and I used Coats & Clark Dual Duty XP All Purpose #3510 for piecing the “Apparition” gray lining. Ren used an invisible monofilament thread (that she hasn’t put back so I can’t tell you for certain who makes it) for securing the rhinestone appliques.
  • Zipper: I used a light purple invisible zipper from my zipper drawer, still leftover from the ill-advised purchase of the “scrap bag” of invisible zippers that really only included colors that I’ll rarely ever use. I used blue Sharpie on the zipper pull to camouflage it against the Comet Tail silk.
  • Rhinestones: We bought two rhinestone appliques “Devine Pair Applique LA-11” from Planet Rhinestone on Etsy, and a loose pack of various sizes of rhinestones from Amazon.

I originally planned to use silk thread for sewing this all up, but read online that it was a bad idea and that silk thread should really only be used for embroidery and the like. So I went with cotton.

Renaissance spent all of her free time in the week leading up Church Prom attaching the appliques, and Emily, Ren, and I spent a frenzied two hours on the day of Church Prom gluing the loose gems to the dress with Beacon Gem-Tac adhesive and toothpicks.

Time Spent

  • Assembling the pattern: 4 hours
  • Sewing the dress: My memory is fuzzy on this, but I feel like it was five weeks’ worth of sewing a few hours a day. My estimate is forty hours of work? All those princess seams took a long time to assemble, and I handstitched the contrast skirt’s hem.
  • Rhinestone application: Renaissance estimates that it took at least ten hours to sew the two appliques onto the dress. It was her first time doing something like that. And then three of us worked for two hours together to glue the loose rhinestones on, so 3 x 2 = 6 hours.
  • Total: ~60 hours of work

Highlights

  • First time working with silk and it was awesome! I ended up phoning Silk Baron to get advice on whether or not to wash the fabric before sewing and whoever answered the phone was incredibly friendly and took their time in explaining the situations where it would be ok and why this was not one of those situations because the dye and the shot weave would lose their coolness factors.
  • There is only one pucker in all of those princess seams! I really learned how to ease fabric with this dress. I’m a fabric-easing machine now. The trick is to cut the notches before you pin.
  • The lighter purple contrast skirt was assembled using French seams, which was the first time I’d done them and they turned out great.
  • Watching Renaissance work on sewing the rhinestone appliques to her dress while watching “The Simpsons.”
  • Working with Emily & Renaissance to glue the gemstones onto the dress. I always like family group projects.

Lowlights

  • Taping the pattern together. Seriously, McCall’s, you need to offer an A0 printing option. A lot of sewing happens on a deadline and having to spend four hours upfront taping paper together is brutal.
  • Owing to my background as a quilter, I default to a shorter stitch length when I’m nervous about a seam. It turns out that this is not the correct default when sewing clothing. My choice to go with a shorter stitch length on the two skirt hemlines resulted in bunchy edge finishes, which no one really noticed except myself. The swoopy hem could have laid down so much nicer if I’d realized that. I did redo the hem on the lowest part of the swoop because it had to be trimmed, but didn’t have time to do the upper portion.
  • I also wonder if I should have used a thin horsehair braid on the swoopy hem in order to make it stand out more? When the silk was fresh the swoop skirt stood out in beautiful rounded columns, but by the time it was finished it had gotten limp and didn’t do that anymore.
  • The lining grew a lot and the neckline sagged more and more as she wore it.

Lowlights aside, I am monstrously pleased with this dress! It had twenty-nine separate pieces to assemble because it was a twelve panel princess seam dress, and I made it work! It was beautiful plain and it was beautiful with the rhinestone embellishments. It makes a beautiful swishing noise when she’s moving in it. It’s just a beautiful dress and she loved it and I’d totally do it all over again.

Note: She is wearing a crinoline with the dress to help the skirt stand out more. I think it was this one. Or it could have been this one. I bought both and each girl wore one of them and I can’t remember who had which one.

Links to all posts about Renaissance’s Prom Dress

A Pair of Pretty Purple Prom Dresses

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Renaissance and Rachel are both going to our church’s Spring Formal with their friends, and I decided to just throw sanity to the wind and make their dresses. I have been looking forward to making dance dresses ever since I found out Emily was a girl, but I’ve never been called upon to make dance dresses because right after Emily was asked to Spring Formal, the COVID shutdown went into place and everything was cancelled. She lost interest in school activities like that, even after things opened back up, and so she never went to any of the dances.

Ren and Rachel, however, are down with the whole formal dance thing and it’s been a lot of fun. I haven’t made any of their dresses yet because I was doing school and had no time for crafty pursuits, so I’m really grateful that I will get a chance to do these two dresses.

Renaissance’s Dress

I am wary of the pattern that she’s picked out because it’s got multiple princess seams all over the place, but if I can figure it out, it’s going to be gorgeous. I’ve already spent way too much time on her pattern because it was only available via PDF download and I had to print it out onto one hundred and twenty seven pieces of paper and then tape them together. It took four hours. I complained, bitterly, on Facebook and I was amazed at how many ride-or-die friends I have who joined me in my fury over the frustration of printing out this pattern.

A day or two later I was reading through Gertie’s newest book announcement on Instagram, and the inevitable comment kerfuffle over her decision to not include paper patterns with the book, when I noticed a comment about how you can send the A0 pattern files to a print center and have them printed out all nice and intact onto one huge sheet of paper like patterns normally come in when they’re sold in an envelope. I felt my heart slow and hiccup as I “remembered” that one of the options for printing out Ren’s dress pattern was A0, not A4 like I thought. And then I told all my friends at church about what an idiot I was.

But then I started writing this blog post and thought I should double-check that remembrance and NO, it was offered as an A4 size, not A0. I’m not an idiot!!! So…prior annoyance still stands. And yes, I do realize that the pattern is out of print and that’s why it’s only available as a PDF file…but really, I’d much rather it not have shown up in Renaissance’s internet searching for dress patterns if my only option was PDF. Something to remember for the future. Printed or A0 ONLY. None of this taping together of letter-sized papers for hours. Aaaand I need to go back to my church friends and recant my idiocy confession.

Ren’s dress is a contemporary pattern and will be sewn up in two different colors of silk—a color shifting indigo/purple dupioni called “Comet Tail,” and a solid orchid purple shantung called “Nolana,” both of which I purchased from Silk Baron. Oh my gosh, aren’t they the prettiest pieces of fabric?!?! I love to just hold them in my hands. And the lining is a gray silk/cotton batiste that I need to buy more of and turn into something I can use everyday because it is wonderful to touch and I need it in my life.

We have also purchased two rhinestone appliques to possibly attach to the dress, just in case the top of the bodice ends up looking too plain. AND I ordered silk thread to sew it all up, which is, weirdly, a really exciting thing for me because I’ve never ordered silk thread before. Whatever makes you happy, right?

Rachel’s Dress

She’s chosen a vintage pattern that just makes me shake my head because it’s so weird when you think about the dates of its publication and all sorts of other historical things that I’ll share with you later when it’s done. As with most republished vintage patterns, the actual sewing instructions are almost non-existent, so I’m guessing how some elements of this dress are going to go together and just hoping that my instincts are good. ‘Cuz that’s always an excellent recipe for success. (Some finger-crossing and optimistic-vibe-sending would be appreciated here…)

She’s picked out a lavender satin taffeta and a lilac organza from JoAnn Fabric that we picked up last weekend, and she’s hoping to add some sort of trim or applique to it. I think this particular dress will need the addition of some petticoats/crinolines to bring it to its full potential, so I’ve already ordered two to be safe. I was thinking I’d make them myself, but my timetable is super tight and I’d rather not stress about something like that.

And that’s where we are. Materials acquired and starting to add coal to the steam engine. Pretty soon we’ll be chugging along and I’ll have more to share with you

Cake, Silks & Pi(es)

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I feel like it was a really productive week, which is always nice. My little routine of writing these goals vs. outcomes weekly posts is helping me stay on-track with what I want to accomplish each week. I’m really glad I’ve reinstituted these. Not only are they keeping me focused, but I really enjoy writing them and re-reading them, like a journal. I rarely re-read my handwritten journals, so I don’t learn as much from my writing in those. Blog posts can actually be searched by keyword, for cryin’ out loud. Wonderful.

Top priorities this last week:

  1. Michael’s birthday
  2. Garden
  3. WREF Scholarship application
  4. Prom dresses
  5. Resurrecting music practice time

Celebrating

  • Michael’s birthday went well, there was an adorable “Among Us wedding cake” made by Renaissance, and each of the kids remembered to get him a gift this year. We did not have steak and potatoes for dinner, as I predicted; he requested fajitas.
  • The potentially brewing project died a sure death this past week. I’m bummed because it would have been a cool thing to do, but I’m also relieved because it was going to take a lot of time and effort to pull off. Many lessons were learned from this experience that I can apply in the future when such a situation inevitably pops up again.

Gardening

  • Trellises are in my house, as are some other gardening items.
  • All seeds needed through the month of April have been secured.
  • Rhubarb is still small.
  • I did sow the cabbages, some alyssum, but nothing else.
  • My sweet peas are just barely starting to sprout! You really have to look for them, but tiny little tendrils are pushing out of the soil!

Community

  • Renaissance did indeed submit her application for the WREF scholarship! Oh gosh, the arrhythmias…she submitted it yesterday at 2:15pm or so, and the pop-up that came up to confirm submission stated that it was due by 4pm that day. We had planned to work on it that evening, but something came up and we moved the time to earlier, THANK GOODNESS.
  • Band Parent meeting went well and many things have been scheduled for this last push of the school year. I still have a few office-y things to do for that.

Creativity

  • At Home:
    • Fat Quarter Shop upcoming quilt: Sneak peek video was posted on Friday on Instagram and I’m aware that my videography skills/software need an upgrade. I had planned to finish piecing the top on Saturday and even cleared my whole schedule for it, but some of my children decided to mutiny against their Saturday chores and much time was lost on this quilt because it went towards dialoguing and disciplining. I’m still confused as to why that day went so sideways. As it stands, I’m about 2/3 of the way done with assembling the blocks.
    • Prom Dresses: The fabric for Ren’s dress has arrived and I am so in love with it. It’s GORGEOUS. The contrast fabric isn’t as flowy as I would have liked, but we’ll just have to make do because it was the only kind of silk they had that came in the color we wanted. FYI, Shantung silk is not flowy. Tell your friends.
  • Van Crafting Sessions™: Designing wedding shawls: Newsflash: I’ve not done this before and I’m not good at it. Yet. (#growthmindset) Time was spent wrapping my head around how to actually do this.
  • Resurrecting music practice sessions: Did not happen because I’ve had them scheduled for the evenings, but now that it’s light outside again we’re actually outside during that time as a family. I’ll need to figure out a different time of day for this.

It was a really, really busy week with a concert on Thursday, which was also Pi Day, so Emily made three pies and because we had three pies chilling at our house I invited Ren’s band friends over after the concert and we all ate pie until 11:15pm. Ha ha. I’m generally an introvert who really appreciates a solid sleep schedule and bedtime, but sometimes you just gotta spend some time with friends. It was a good choice, despite how tired it made me the next day.