Golden Ethnic Dress - Bohemian Fashions

Evening readers, are you ready to read more ramblings about my passion for making something from nothing!!??

I wanted to make a dress completely from scratch. I had some ideas about the shape and general design but I also wanted the dress to 'speak to me' along the way. I love it when I pick up unusually shaped scraps of material in my fabric boxes and find they are just the right shape for  a section of the garment. Often, these pieces are shapes that I would never, ever think to actually cut to fit in a particular space though - this is where the garment appears to construct itself.

I began with some contrasting colour satin fabrics like this ........

I worked down from the shoulders and chest to the waist and hips with a lovely tapestry fabric and added some darts to give the garment more shape.

I like to work on the back and sides of the garment before the front gets to detailed otherwise the front gets all the attention and becomes a little to fussy!












Always the trickiest part, the skirt. I find that the bodice comes together pretty quickly but the skirt takes a lot more pinning, pleating tacking, removing, starting again, cup of tea!!!!

The number of different fabrics I pleated, pinned, photographed and removed was bordering on the ridiculous!!

Finally, the dark purple seemed to be the best fit from the hundreds of pieces of fabric I scanned in my workshop.. It is actually the lining of an old 'Monsoon' skirt.

Finally, I added some unusual wool around the hips that I purchased in my favourite haberdashery shop in Didim, Turkey. It looks great but was a nightmare to stitch. In the end, I resorted to giving the sewing machine a tea break and hand stitched it in place.

The end result ..................

I hope you like it. Further images and information can be found in my Etsy and Folksy shops (scroll down for the links).


















https://www.etsy.com/listing/199685870/ethnic-dress-bohemian-gypsy-shabby-chic?

https://folksy.com/items/6516287-Ethnic-Dress-Bohemian-Gypsy-Shabby-Chic-Romantic-Fantasy-Prom-Dress-Unique-