Custom Made - Hand Printed Dress

Each year in the spring the Fort Wayne Museum of Art hosts an annual fundraiser called the ARTrageous Gala.  This year they asked if I would be willing to be a part of the even by auctioning off my time for a custom made cocktail dress that night in March.  The FWMoA has helped me so much through hosting the regional Scholastic competition throughout the years that of course I said yes!  It was such pleasure and honor that they even thought of me, and I was so glad to be a part of it that night.  

For the custom dress - I first drafted the pattern using the woman's measurements.  After the first pattern was drafted I made a mock up dress to make sure the fit was correct.  I had to make some small adjustments in the shoulders, but other than that the fit was fine.  Once the adjustments were made to the pattern I started the construction on the real dress.   I wanted to keep the design of the actual dress pretty simple, because there's so much work that went into the print.  The pattern on the fabric was all hand drawn using fine point Sharpies.  I lost track of how much time went into the doodling, but I'm sure it was over 15 hours of just doodling.

And to answer the question that I know many of you are probably thinking - yes the dress is for the most part water resistant.  I did a test with water and it was fine as long as there was no aggressive scrubbing (when I did scrub it just faded a little).  Since the dress is made from linen it will have to be dry cleaned anyway, so fading should not be a problem.

The dress is fully lined with an invisible zipper in the back of the dress.  There is a placket of hand covered buttons over the zipper to create a little vintage element - but without actually having up button up the whole dress.   

All photos taken by myself

There was a slight bidding war that night and I was asked in the middle of it if I could make two custom dresses instead of one.  The other dress is incredibly detailed so it's taking more time than I initially thought, but I'm planning on finishing it before I leave for school which is in 3 weeks now.  If I go by the plan, photos of that dress should be up soon!  

In non-sewing news - my sister was home visiting last week and it was so incredible to see her again!  It was a lot of fun and we took a few photo shoots, which I'm hoping to post soon.  In the mean time, here are some of our instagram pictures from the week. 

Ruth's Instagram.  My instagram. 

I hope your August has been nothing but spectacular so far!  I'm hoping to finish a few more posts before I go to Savannah, so more should be up soon!