starting on the actual dress garment.

After finalising my pattern pieces it was time to go ahead and start the real thing cutting out the actual fabric scary! I used the black silvery print fabric for the top half which brought out the greeny yellow of the lace collar beautifully the full pleated skirt half was pleated before hand then attatched also using the yellow dyed lace as a trim between the two fabrics.

dying the lace acid flourescent yellow.

After trying several dyes that resulted in a sunflower yellow colour i found this fluorescent yellow fabric paint which took to the fabric really well and finally had the desired acid yellowy-green colour effect i first painted it on to the fabric left it to dry the ironed a piece of cotton over the top of it to set the fabric paint.

pattern cutting for the jersey top.

2nd Toile for the dress.

after doing the first toile it was clear the fit wasn't exactly right the sleeves needed amending and i needed to find a way to get the dress top on and off the child so i reamended my patterns and started a second toile i used roller loops as an opening for the back piece of the dress i was advised to not Toile the bottom half of the dress as it would be difficult seen as the fabric was already pleated and expensive to toile in the actual thing.

Lets get pattern cutting.

Ok so not my favourite part of this process as i find pattern cutting a real challenge but have been working on creating patterns for my dress this week using the fashion tape creating shapes straight from the manequin i think an easier way of doing this however we will see once ive finished makin up the toile.

first attempt in the dye room.

a key theme throughout my designs is the acidic yellow throughout after speaking to our dye technician bex i realised the university don't have any acid dyes in stock however i tried using an alternative dye unfortunately the dylon yellow dyes either didn't take to my fabric or came out in a primary sunflower yellow which is not the look I'm going for at all so a failed attempt but at least i know for next time now on the hunt for a fluorescent alumnus type dye see what i can find online.