Project run and play week #3 - design your own fabric

 For this week's Project Run and Play, we were tasked with designing our own fabric. I decided to take this project quite literally and design some fabric at Spoonflower! I have always wanted to do this and I have been playing around on Inkscape, drawing delphiniums (my fave flower) so that became my theme! You can read a bit about the design process on my guest post at Sew McCool. I will add a bit more details here, however, just for fun.  I spent hours making these pictures. Literally hours and hours. Probably 12 hours in all, over the course of a week. This was not a simple process.  I hand drew those delphinium flowers that you see on the bodice and colored each petal individually in Inkscape. I painstakingly added each stamen.  I used the controlZ keystroke (undo) a lot!

As you can see, each petal is a slightly different shape.  

One of the reasons I love flowers is for how perfectly unperfect they can be.  They never have completely uniform parts.   After I made these individual flowers and created the fabric for the bodice, I then moved on to the skirt fabric.  

For the skirt fabric, I cut and pasted and resized the flowers to achieve the look of one delphinium stalk.  For the stalks, I also removed the dark blue outline I had put around the bodice fabrics flowers.  So, the skirt flowers have a softer look.  

The leaves were also hand drawn.

 When the fabric arrived, I was pretty sure I was going to make a Tie Dye Diva Perfect Party dress with it.   Because fabric from Spoonflower is pricey, I chose to get the least expensive option, the basic combed cotton.  The fabric resembles sheeting fabric in it's sheerness and wrinkle factor.  So, I knew I would need to line the bodice. However, I was unsure what to do with the skirt!

Until I saw this Barbie. 

I cannot show you a pic because I don't want to get in trouble with Mattel, but please be sure to click on the link to see Mad Men Betty Draper Barbie, my inspiration!

For, you see, this project is also going to be part of a Tie Dye Diva/ Handmade Dress Haven blog hop for how to use the Perfect Party Dress pattern in unique ways.  ( I will tell you more about that tomorrow).  So, voila, the Betty Draper-inspired Perfect Party Dress.

See! It's the same pose!  Isn't she cute, my little Eliza!

 Tomorrow, I will tell you more about the pin tucks, the tulle underskirt, and the double-gathered waistband I made for this dress.  In the meantime, here are some outtakes from our photo shoot.

 One tulle underskirt is so boring! How about adding a few more tutus and some bloomers!

This is her "what does a model look like" pose.

Big sister was the stylist for the shoot. 

Cute girls!

More posing like models.