A frock, a romper & a giveaway!

This is the project I have been working on for a number of days last week and the reason behind my first muslin. Remember the gorgeous retro inspired dresses with full skirt by Louis Vuitton I blogged about earlier? Well, this is my take on it. In fact, corset tops and dresses by Dolce & Gabbana and Louis Vuitton are on almost every fashion magazine here and I have been drooling all over them.

It is no surprised that I want to create my own version. Meet my Time Travel Frock. So named as I could very well travel to the 1950s and back in it without feeling out of place just by adding on a pair of pretty gloves. For this dress I opted for a 50s inspired drop waist skirt instead of a waistband.

I used the US$2 Margarete top pattern from burdastyle and modified it to create this look. The result is quite different from the original as I have widened the shoulder straps, inserted boning and padding to the bust piece and added a skirt to create this dress. Instead of piping, I used silver ric rac at the top of the dress.

The cotton fabrics are all from ikea. The camel fabric for the top is lighter than the home decor leaves fabric I used for the skirt. I simply love using home decor fabric for long skirts. This is the second time I doing so. The first was for the 50s Inspired Sabrina dress. It’s magical how they sway!

The dress is featured as burdastyle’s Project of the Week and you can create it too by following my tutorial here.This is the first time I created such a lengthy tutorial and I hope you have no problem understanding it 🙂 If you have any queries, please feel free to leave a comment or email me. I’ll try my best to respond. It should be suitable for an intermediate sewing enthusiast. You will need a dose of patience because there is quite a bit of fitting involved but you will be rewarded with a flattering corset dress. I will also encourage creating a muslin like I did for the top because you might need to adjust the cup size for a better fit by adjusting the bottom seam allowance of pattern piece number 2.

My now wearable muslin has a new invisible zipper too and is also ready to face the world! It might be the perfect alternative for my friends living in warmer climate or in the Southern hemisphere! Its called the Summer Lovin’ Romper. It’s terribly cute 🙂

Other potential variations I imagined include the bodice combined with Kasia skirt in nautical print fabric or with the Sean skirt for something more flirty!

To motivate you. my sewing comrades to create the bodice with or without straps for yourselves and play around with the bottom variations, I am having a Margarete kit giveaway. To participate, leave me a comment and tell me where in the world you are from. There will be one winner chosen by the random number generator (random.org) but you will need to indicate which of the two fabrics below you prefer. The grey leaves fabric from ikea or the retro red polka dot fabric from Japan. The 1 yard of fabric will be mailed with sewable plastic boning and foam padding anywhere in the world, to the winner.

If you subscribe to my blog via wordpress, you are automatically given another chance in this giveaway. If you subscribe via other RSS services, please leave me a comment telling me for example that you have subscribe via blogger/google/bloglovin etc, so you get another chance. You can also get a third chance if you blog about any of the two outfits above. The giveaway will end Monday 27 September 2010. I hope you enjoy participating in this giveaway and happy sewing everyone!