Entry #10: Professional

Entrant Category: Professional

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Voting for the 2014 Summer FDC...

Starts On Sept 1st, 2014.

Voting Ends on Sept 20th.

Please vote for this entry by commenting below or 

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Vote for Entry #10, by writing -- "I vote for Entry #10"

We recommend voting for one newbie entry, 

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Design

For this design contest, I wanted the outfit to be centered on archery and looked no further than Pinterest for inspiration for my outfit.  The color scheme, with its muted green, brown and hints of gold, brings to mind a fantasy forest.

This picture illustrates the skirt I was looking for and a nice fitted bodice.

Although I wanted a dress, I found this picture a great starting point for my under blouse and dress bodice.

With all these ideas in my head, I sat down and drew my outfit design.

This features a long sleeveless dress with an embellished yoke, princess seams, and inset pleats of another fabric for the skirt. The under tunic is v-necked with tucked sleeves. The corset is simple and curves upward in the front as well as the back.

Drafting

I knew that I wouldn’t find any patterns similar to what I wanted so I started drafting a new pattern for this outfit. This princess-seamed dress was based on a past pattern I created, but included an added yoke and inset pleats.

Once I was satisfied with the pattern, I cut out a practice dress to see if I needed to make any final adjustments.

Overall, I was really satisfied with how it was coming along. I made some small adjustments to the fit of the dress and modified the lining of the tunic.

For the fabric for the real outfit, I went the local Jo-Anns and looked for the right drape and color. The decorative green and the brown are thin suede. One of the plain green fabrics (I didn’t use both) was used for the inset pleats as well as the lining. And the cream was for the tunic.

Tunic

The tunic sleeves were time-consuming, but turned out quite well. I first marked a half inch grid as a guideline for the hand sewing (the lines are hard to see due to the creased fabric), and then hand-sewed certain points together to create the pattern.

After all that sewing, I was quite proud of how it turned out, especially since I had never hand-sewed anything like this before.

I repeated the same process for the other sleeve then attached the sleeves to the bodice, sewed the side seams, and topstitched the hems.

Dress

For the dress, I decided to hand embroider the yoke with a branch, leaves, and flowers. It was very time consuming and tedious but definitely worth it.

Here are some in-progress shots of the dress.

 Sewing the inset pleats...

Roll hemming the bottom hem...

Here you can see the lining attached to the main dress. 

It isn’t a full lining, but ends where the pleats begin.

Corset

The corset design was a challenge for me to draft. I made several different corsets but they all didn’t suit the dress or show it off. Eventually, I made up this following corset which surprisingly complemented the dress nicely after all my failed former attempts.

Here are the pieces of the corset cut out...

Sewn together...

Topstitched...

Pressing the eyelets on...

Quiver

In the past, I had never made a quiver or even attempted one. There were very few archery weapon tutorials but finally I found one I especially liked and based my quiver, arrows, and bow off of it.

Here are my quiver pieces.

I topstitched each edge to finish it off and give it some decoration.

Arrows

I was going to use chicken kabob sticks for the arrows, however they were out of proportion for the doll. So I ended up taking apart a sushi mat for the sticks. Then I painted them brown and glued feathers onto them. I finished them off by sanding the ends to give them a point and painting the ends black for the nocks.

Bow

The bow was an interesting process for me. First, I took thick wire and shaped it to a re-curve bow shape. Then, to hold its shape and keep it together, I wrapped it with a thin wire. Next, I covered the wire with foil and put on two coats of papier-mâché to smooth it off. For the finishing touches, the bow was painted and the string was glued on.

Necklace

The necklace was made out of two human-sized necklace chains twisted around each other and held together in the back by magnetic clasps. The pendant was made out of a glass leaf bead fastened to the necklace with a twisted wire in the shape of a three-leaf clover.

Boots

Originally, I planned to order boots to match the outfit but I was having trouble finding anything that matched the dress. Instead, I made the boots myself. Having never done this before, I made a few failed attempts before finally getting the boot shape and fit right.

Final photo shoot

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Voting for the 2014 Summer FDC...

Starts On Sept 1st, 2014.

Voting Ends on Sept 20th.

Please vote for this entry by commenting below or 

emailing us at nora.demington@gmail.com.

Vote for Entry #10, by writing -- "I vote for Entry #10."

We recommend voting for one newbie entry, 

one intermediate, and one pro, at least.

Thank you!