Saturday, September 01, 2012

Erdem Chocolate Linen & Lace Dress - Pt. 1

Fashion Week starts next week and the designers will be showing Spring 2013 but this dress from Erdum's Resort 2012 line really pushed my creative buttons.  Now to be honest, this is just one of the dresses from this line that I loved but it's the one that shouted my name the loudest.  You may yet see more interpretations from this collection...especially since Erdum is fast becoming my favorite designer!


photo courtesy of Style.com

The dress on the left is the one that I want so I collected the following fabrics from "The Collection." How kewl is that?  That I had all of this on hand!



Of course, I knew that I would start with my TNT dress pattern to make this garment. And after the twists and turns of my last dress adventure, something familiar was what I needed to sew!  This will be my autumn lace dress since lace is still quite popular heading into fall.  The linen fabric is from the Couture Line at Fabric Mart and the lace is an Anna Sui polyester blend from Emmaonesock.

To me the most important part of making this dress work is the lace overlay. Normally, I would spend days riding the bus back and forth to my job figuring out the construction order of the dress.  Since I've been on vacation for awhile now, I'm working the order out as I make the dress which, of course, has slowed down it's construction - but since that seems to be the operative word of this sewcation - slow - I'm okay with that. 

Determining how to make the lace overlay ~
My first challenge was trying to see the back of the dress.  I searched all over the internet and none of my favorite retailers even purchased this dress.  What the heck is wrong with them!?  Couldn't they see the beauty of this sheath?  So from a piece of the side view in the picture above, I determined that the back has the lace overlay too...especially after looking at the backs of quite a few of the designer's other dresses.  He typically carries the design all the way through the back. 

Making the lace overlay ~
From those observations this is what I did to make the lace overlay...

To prepare the lace fabric, I pinned all of the scallops together.



Then I determined how wide I wanted the center portion to be.  I chose 6" after measuring across the front of me.  I started out with 10" and moved down to 8", finally settling on 6 because I liked the proportion of lace and linen.



Next I laid the front dress pattern piece on top of the lace measuring 3" from each scallop to the pattern's center front line.  I wanted to insure that there was a standard 6" down the front of the dress.



For the back piece I used a 3.5" measurement to account for the back seam and vent. The lace pieces were first pinned to the linen with pins inserted every couple of inches to get a good hold.  I used my pink & raspberry pins so that I could see them through the lace.



Then I carefully and slowly machine stitched the lace scallops to the linen fabric using the smallest stitch on my sewing machine (2.2).  I wanted a lot of stitches to insure that the lace pieces were stitched down completely to the linen dress front and backs.



I hand basted the remaining portions of the lace to the linen. Finally I serged the lace and linen pieces together.  



The dress front and backs were now ready to be sewn together. Since this is my TNT dress pattern, I will sew it together like normal.  This is where I am now so the next post about this garment will be the reveal.

...as always more later!





27 comments:

  1. OMG - this is going to look stunning! I might just have to "borrow" this idea. Love the chocolate with the lace. A lovely combination - like a frothy cappuccino.

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  2. Fantastic! Can't wait, and I am now inspired to sew with more lace soon.

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  3. This is lovely. I'm becoming fond of lace lately. For some reason I'm imaging this with a long string of pearls.

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  4. I love your inspiration picture- I can see why you were inspired! I can't wait to see your version. Thanks for showing us how you did it! It looks a little tricky, but it is so gorgeous, I did feel tempted to follow in your footsteps...

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  5. It certainly pays to have a good stash, hem, collection. It's looking really good Caroline.

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  6. This is so beautiful. You will looking stunning in it!

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  7. I love hearing your "take" on the new collections..this one is
    sure winner! Enjoy the rest of your vacation.

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  8. It's going to be another beauty. Can't wait to see the final with styling and jewels and shoes and the whole shebang.

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  9. I love this color combination -- beautiful! Thanks for explaining how you are doing this -- it is so helpful.

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  10. I am so glad you decided to do this dress. I need a dress for my niece's December wedding, and you've got me thinking about a floor length version. Hmmm. Can't wait to see what comes next. Brava Judi

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  11. I am on the edge of my seat! I can't wait to see the finished dress. I love that gorgeous chocolate linen! Again, another inspiration from the Sewing Fanatic Atelier!!!!

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  12. Another beauty from Carolyn, coming right up! You inspire me to go hunting for lace and make a version for myself.

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  13. Wow so far, this is gonna be a really nice dress.

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  14. That is going to be beautiful and I can't wait...hope you are making it today. :) Thank you for telling us how to measure the front and how to sew the lace on!!! I'm soooo thankful for you!!!

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  15. Wow. The prep work is looking really good.

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  16. This dress is going to be gorgeous!

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  17. So looking forward to the reveal.. that dress is going to be a show stopper.

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  18. This is going to be great! I really like the inspiration dress!

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  19. WOW this will be so pretty! Can't wait to see it! Waiting....

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  20. I like what I'm seeing so far and can't wait to see the end result. Lovely.

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  21. That's going to be one seriously beautiful dress--can't wait for the pix!

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  22. Oh, wow, this is going to be killer! Can't wait to see it!

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  23. Wow, what a beautiful inspiration. This dress is going to be awesome!

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  24. Those are amazing inspiration pieces...I know your dress is going to be incredible. I love how you interpret the styles!

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  25. Hummmm. Very interesting. I have three pieces of lace in my stash, aging away. And I have some linen, but don't think it will match or co-ordinate. I do have a linen supply house bookmarked.

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