The Couture Dress: Part 1

Last Monday I signed up for the Craftsy .com class the Couture Dress, taught by Susan Khalje. The class was on half price sale and I have been wanting to take a class or seminar with Susan for a very long time now. I just haven't been able to make the finances plus the time away work out.

When I first saw the class on Craftsy I was skeptical. Honestly speaking I wasn't sure that spending about 150$ on what I thought was a video recording was worth it. I signed up for one of The Craftsy free classes and did a search on the blogs of others that have taken the classes. Between the reviews and my experience with the free class and the half price sale I decided to go for it.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! I am so glad that I did! I am really enjoying it.

I have my sewing studio set up with my large screen laptop sitting at an easily viewable spot from anywhere in the studio. I payed for my class, ordered my Vogue pattern at checkout and while I was working on other projects last week I started watching/listening to the first couple of classes.

My Vogue pattern arrived by Friday and I spent several hours yesterday working on my Class project.

Here is my progress so far:

Vogue 8648 view D

Fabric: White printed linen (the one I bought in Syracuse, NY)

Preparing pattern: 55 mins (adding stitching lines, extending and/or correcting grain lines)
changes made to pattern: changed bodice side back and bodice side front to straight of grain. Pieces 2 and 4



Pinning and cutting muslin: 55 mins
This took slightly longer than it should, I realized after pressing and pinning the entire length of muslin that my skirt pieces were to large to be cut on the folded muslin and needed to be opened and re-pinned with the fabric opened.

Transferring marks to muslin: 1 hour



My thoughts so far:
I have always had an interest in working with couture methods and making items that fit me and fit me very well. Several things that came to mind immediately was that using this process the pattern is 'saved', meaning I can use it over and over as I change shape (meaning hopefully lose weight!) and I can also use it for other people and if I hate the pattern I can always pass it on to someone else who wants it.
I realized that it also allows me to easily sew a beautiful fitted garment for someone else.

Marking only the stitching lines was very much an Aha moment for me as well as only having to take minimal measurements.

I'm excited to work on the process!

One last thought... I'm not sure that I would use this process on every garment that I sew, specifically some knit 'easy fit' garments and my favorite TNT patterns. Anything that I think I need to make a muslin for would definitely benefit. (thinking of the red wool coat I just made)

I'm also working on getting my dress form into a perfect body double.... More on that soon.



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