~ An Autumn Sewing Project ~
After a summer full of faceups, I was itching to do more sewing and starting sketching out ideas for my next outfit project. Following a bit of brainstorming, I settled on a circle skirt with a ruffley petticoat and full chiffon blouse.
The most essential element was the heart-shaped bodice detail and I really wanted to test that out. I’ve also never made an MDD sized circle skirt so I had to figure out a pattern for that. Not to mention that this was my first time sewing with chiffon, so a lot of small details added up to a steeper learning curve.
After settling on the basic details of my outfit silhouette, I shopped around some ideas for color schemes to pals on social media. #3 with navy and black got a lot of votes, plus I already had most of the materials to make it, so that made sense for me to try as a first attempt.
Unfortunately nearly all my local fabric stores have shut down, and since I couldn’t find a good silver chiffon at the only nearby shop I swapped from silver to a dusty blue chiffon. There was also a good stretchy sock fabric that matched the chiffon, so I’m pretty happy with the final colors and how everything works together!
The inner petticoat is trimmed with about 9 feet of ruffled ribbon, which I had to do mostly with carefully gathered basting stitches instead of my ruffler foot, because there was no more ribbon of this type if I messed up! Plus sewing anything on the curved hem of a circle skirt is a pain. I did find a good tutorial that made hemming the curves a bit easier, at least.
I also adjusted my MDD sock pattern to make a mochi-ashi version since this fabric wasn’t super stretchy. Oh, and in case you’re wondering about my model – she’s a Volks DDH-20 with a custom faceup, wearing a Pengin Workshop wig and my handmade eyes. The shoes are also from Volks.
Overall, 90% of this pattern had to be figured out from scratch – just the sloper for the L-bust bodice of the blouse was sourced elsewhere.
I can still see all my mistakes, but overall I’m pretty happy with how cute this outfit turned out! The patterns still need more testing but I hope to one day release them as well.