A couple of Fridays ago, it was again time for the most important work event of the year. The Summer Graduation, 150 students came to pick up their diploma in caps and gowns during a splendidly sunny ceremony. This of course warranted a new dress.
I had found the pattern months before on Papavero, the Polish site that also gave me my January Graduation pattern. They call it the Sukienka na poprawiny and you can find it here. This pattern features an asymmetric full skirt and asymmetric top, it’s sleeveless and doesn’t have too many pattern pieces. Two skirt parts, one bodice front, two bodice back, a strap and three facing pieces. The skirt pieces are enormous and are not really suitable for a lining. This meant some special fabric restrictions as I didn’t want a see through dress. Luckily I found some blue and white fabric that was really opaque, it was a very long piece which I still got for about 10 euros, it was apparently just too short to cut in two (lucky me!).
All the bits were cut out and sewed the thing together. The front of the skirt turned out shorter that I would have figured so I decided to do a bias tape hem to restrict length loss as much as possible. This would also mean a nice decorative feature. I also covered some of the seams in the same bias tape for cleaner insides. I made a few changes, namely: increasing the depth of the neckline at the front, subsequently changing the strap piece so it would still fit, shortened the bodice at the shoulders quite drastically, inserted plastic boning in the back darts and I added pockets.
The pockets were fantastic. I could put so much stuff in but due to the nature of the skirt it was invisible. It helped me out a lot during the day. The other fun thing is the mega swirl factor of the skirt. To combat the dreaded underwear showing during mega twirl, I also created some shorts to wear underneath, but more on those next time.
The invisible zip worked out pretty well and it’s nice to wear. It’s airy but still *in my opinion* formal enough to serve well during events like this. People also made a lot of positive comments about it, which is always nice. I think I may make the dress (or just the skirt) again, but then I’m going to lengthen the front of the skirt a bit so that I feel ‘safer’ when I wear it. All in all, it was a success!
