THE DRESS

 THE PROCESS

  For this project I thought hard about how I could create a piece using lace without actually making the lace myself. I decided to go to the charity shops around Uttoxeter to find some lace dresses or items that I could use for my project. I found a simple large black lace dress that I thought would be perfect as it had a lot of material & an underlayer too. I also found an old looking teddy bear that reminded me of the ones my grandma keeps on her shelves. When I got home I started to cut up the dress into large sections ready to be used to create something else. I wanted to create a dress for the teddy bear, and had seen videos on how people turn old clothes into new clothes so I had a vague idea of how to do it. 

  I began by placing paper round parts of the teddy and drawing an outline round each section to create stencils to use when cutting the material. This was a lot harder and more time consuming than it needed to be because I didn't have a tape measure. I realised after creating my first one that both sides weren't symmetrical, so I started folding each cut out in half and cutting excess off the edges so they were. 

  After this I placed the stencils on the black fabric which made the underlayer of the original dress and marked out where I was going to cut, leaving about an inch of space round each part so I had enough extra fabric for when I sewed them together. I then pinned each section to the teddy bear & started sewing them together, cutting off the excess fabric where necessary, such as round the arms. I repeated the same process with the lace.

  I left the sleeves without an underlayer as the original dress had the same. I felt leaving certain parts without an underlayer gave more contrast to the dress. The skirt was also longer than the underlayer which gave the same effect as the sleeves. I gave the front of the dress a V neck line as I felt it looked more feminine than a regular circular neck line. For the skirt section, I folded over parts of the fabric to give a pleated effect so the dress had more shape to it. I also wanted to add a corset style effect to the back of the dress. Although I planned out how to do it, in the end I changed my mind as I was worried the lace that tightened the dress at the back might tear the material, and I didn't want to take a risk and potentially ruin what I'd already done.

  As a final touch I added a bow, made out of the underlayer fabric, round the waist of the dress and another one on the teddys ear, with a small jewel in the centre. In the end, I ended up taking the dress off the teddy and having it by itself as the teddy looked 'too cute' and keeping it separate created more thought behind the dress and made it more open to interpretation. To finish, I added a double layered thread to both sides of the dress so it could be hung up on the wall at the exhibition.

OUTCOME AND EVALUATION

  Overall, I am really proud of this piece as I have never created clothing before, I've only ever fixed holes in clothes or done embroidery on clothes. It was challenging creating something so small too, especially because I did it all by hand and didn't have a tape measure. I feel this turned out really well and I surprised myself with the way I used the limited resources I had to create something that looks thought through & quite well done. 

  One thing I would've changed if I knew from the start that I wasn't going to present this dress on the teddy, is the stitching at the back of the dress and round the neck line at the top of the dress. The stitching wasn't very neat and looked slightly messy, however, as it was hand sewn it was difficult to make it seamless. I chose to hand sew this instead of use a sewing machine as I wanted to challenge myself and create a lace dress using old techniques that were used when lace first came about as sewing machines didn't exist. I did try different stitching techniques on the dress too, and learnt how to create neat edges on clothing where certain parts were folded over using a blanket stitch, and used a back stitch on areas where two sections were connecting. If I were to do something like this again, I would experiment more with different ways of sewing so I could have a smoother and more seamless outcome.