Petal Bust dress - part one

I promised pictures of my progress on my Petal bust dress design process. Before I start I just want to mention a few things. First, my self drafted patterns are messy and I make no apologies for it. Since I am only drafting this for myself I don't mind if my pattern looks sloppy. Second, I won't be starting from scratch with a sloper. Instead I am skipping ahead of the process by using one of my other patterns that has similar lines as a guide. Third, this is just a look at how I go about drafting my patterns and should not be looked as a tutorial by any means. I don't always go by the book. I make it all up as I go along. That being said, here we go!

First, I pull out all my tools and a tried and true fitted bust pattern that will serve as my guide. (Yep, those are can goods acting as a pattern weight, heh.)

Second, I trace the fitted bust pattern removing the point at center front bust since the original pattern was a criss cross. Center front is now truly center front.

Third. Mark each pattern peice and cut them out. Then I make the underlayer front bust facing by overlapping the top of the two at the seam sew lines just enough so I can trace out the shape of the facing.

Now I make the facing for the back the same way. Line up the seam lines of each peice and trace out your facing. I made mine 1 1/2" wide.

 

Next, I take a shot at drafting the petal bust layer. My idea was to take the same two bust pattern peices and extend the length of the princess seams to form a point, or a collar type shape. Then I angeled the center front into a deep V so it is lower cut then the underlayer.

Before I do anything else I need to do a mock up. I don't have any muslin so I used two fabrics I had just enough of to test the pattern. The striped one is stretch poplin and the silver is stretch sateen. This was a pretty good first attempt, but the petal layer is too loose and needs to be contoured at top. I also decide here that having a center front seam was a bad idea as it leaves way too much inside seam bulk.  Back to the drawing board!

Here is draft number two of the petal bust, now to make another mock up...

Just a quick mock up to see if I fixed the problems. Looks good so far so now I can finish sewing the petal layer and cut out the rest of the pattern for the bodice.

These are also from my tried and true pattern so I know they won't need any tweaking.

..and here is mock up number two. Almost everything is sewn in here including boning. Once I had it pinned to the dressform I realized I needed to drop the bust line of the underlayer by about two inches. Gah! Rather then start over I decide to pick out the seams and correct the mistake. I forgot to take a picture but I then corrected the paper pattern and then re-drafted a new facing to fit the new lower bustline.

Mock up number three. I am happy with the fit and like how it turned out enough to keep and wear the mock up. I don't have enough of this fabric to add on the skirt part and make it a dress so I decide to make it into a top. I had just enough of the silver sateen left to add binding and make straps.

Here it is close up. Hard to see in the picture but I added in a little pleat to the underlayer at center front. This is as far as I got today. (Took all day!) I like how it looks so far but I do want to try and work out the top of the princess seams on the petal bust layer and turn it into a dart instead. That's for today. I will make another post with pictures of the skirt draft and the finished product of this as a dress once I find time to finish.