A grad dress the 50's would be proud of (LARGE images!)

[chibi muse]

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back

I designed, drafted, and made this dress from scratch for my grade 12 grad, using a late 50's pattern of my grandmother's as a loose guideline. I've been planning this all year, and I am so happy with how it turned out! My grad was actually in may, but I didn't get a chance to upload pictures until now.

The original pattern was a one-piece dress with an extremely high waist, the only parts of it you can still see is the fold over collar and the fullness of the skirt.

The fabric is one layer of butter yellow taffeta and en electric blue sheer with velvet flowers embossed on it. It's a little hard to see in the photos, but the top is a seperate, boned, fully lined, bodice with 2 points in the front and two in the back. A piece of satin ribbon extends from each point, and then snaps on to the gathered part of the skirt. I sewed little tiny bows on top of the snaps to cover them. Excuse the wrinkles below the bust, I was slouching a little!

The skirt has no crinoline, just a layer of sheer, a layer of taffeta, and the lining. The top layer is gathered up like belle's dress from beauty and the beast!

I originaly planned to have the top layer be a light lilca colour, but the fabric I found in that colour was $20 a metre! If it was my wedding dress or something I so would have done it, but I made my own dress to save money so I went with an on-sale fabric instead. Nobody else had a yellow and blue dress, thats for sure!

The picture of the back is candid obviously, ^_~ I'm about to fall over trying to put my shoes on. But you can see the little white shrug I wore for part of the night! I also had white little short gloves and a white vintage beaded purse. I'm wearing my grandmothers jewelry, the earrings are clip-ons!

(Sorry I don't have a picture without my hands infront of the top)

[brenna]

LOVE IT. It's SO fabulous.

[frix220]

  Woww... you did a fabulous job!! The more I look at it, the more I like it

[Mosquito]

Wow!! That's gorgeous!!

[Tygir]

Excellent! I love the shape of the skirt. 

[kritenkrit]

holy wow...you did an excellent job!  i love love it!!  it looks great on you too! i really like the back part of the bodice with the two pointy parts.  super!

[cute_anarchy]

Really amazing, gorgeous and professional looking!  I am super impressed - you should go into fashion, it looks like you have a really unique and fun sense of style!

[Phosphoria]

Wow, that is just plain amazing and very impressive! I love the colour scheme, it really suits you. Your hair is fabulous too!

[PixieDust721]

beautiful!  I love the top of the bodice and the styling of the corset in the back was a nice surprise )

[cheera]

I love everything about this. New favorite project!