The Serpent Dress!

All the dresses of this collection are proving to be challenging in their own way. However,the "Serpent Dress" or "Pheedi" in Greek (since the dress is also inspired by the snake goddess of Knossos) has become the winner in the most difficult bodices to design by far.

The first challenge came up because of the curving lines that weed their way from the shoulders, around the bossom to join together at the hip are extremely hard to sew ! And I mean REALLY hard! (see arrows drawn on form to the right) Therefore, for several fittings each time we tried the bodice we couldn't tell if we had gotten the fit wrong or it was simply a sewing error. As a designer it is very important to note this difference because it will save you time in the end if you make sure you are sewing your design correctly.

So, we had to figure out how to sew it......

In the mock-ups, I always cut corners whenever I can, but on "Serpent" I found it wasn't possible. So for all the sewing geeks out there here are some useful tricks I learned after consulting my teachers and just trying it again and again.
1. Have an impeccable notching system. Make awl punches to mark them through the patterns on to the joining fabrics.
2. Stay stitch at 1/2" or 3/8" along the edge of each piece of fabric to mark your seam line.
3. Tons of pins! Make sure to match all of your awl punches and snip to the stay stitched line to help ease the pieces together.
Using all of these techniques finally allowed me to sew a successful sample which looks great!

I love the "Serpent Dress" because of the many design considerations that went into the concept and then how it has evolved. As you can see in my sketch here, the dress' complicated lines are inspired by this Varda collage. The women in the collage are inspired by ancient Greek goddesses which I talked about in an early blog....the only difference is that the Greek's simply bore the breasts of the women, and I will be putting a cloth over them...unless Lil' Kim puts in a special order ;-)

After we finished the top and placed it with the skirt we noticed that there was a lack of flow between the top and skirt. It was almost like two different types of garments. The main problem was that the lines coming down from the bodice of the dress starkly stopped at the waist causing a rupture to the flow of the

We found a good solution to this problem after some trial and error. We had the lines curve out and end on the sides of the bodice. This allowed the skirt fabric and the bodice fabric to merge into one another and connect the parts--see pink arrows to left. Come back next week to see pictures of how this turns out!

...to be continued