Some of My Designs

I've grown to truly love sewing garments over the past couple years.  There's just something magnificent and fulfilling about taking clothe, and making it into more than the sum of its parts.

Unfortunately,  my sewing projects are rather few and far between.

In the meantime I've been scheming  up potential designs.  I hope to make most of these someday, so that I can get better at drafting and sewing.

This design has been kicking around for a while.  It would be a fun coat for me that I didn't have to get out of the kids section.    It  would be grey, with dull metallic buttons and belt buckle.   The skirt portion would have wide pleats in it to add a little bit of fun.  It's the kind of in-style coat that you see everywhere, but with more of me in it.

This is a second coat that I drew in reaction to my first day of wintery weather last fall.  I went outside and was almost in shock about all the dark colors.  Nearly everyone was wearing black, grey, or dark blue.  I honestly thought that something awful had happened and I hadn't gotten the news yet.  This coat would be red, and have an appropriate hood to go with the color.

The front is rather plain,  but the back will have this fun little detail.

More pleats,  because pleats are awesome.  This should come across as a fun mix of a bomber jacket with a flair of militant coats  from the early 1800's.

The only problem with this design is that I would have no idea what color to make the buttons. Contrasting colors just don't look good in my head, while more similar ones just look -blah-.  If you have an idea tell me in the comments.  I would love your feedback.

In December my (then) future sisters in law and I visited the mall while another relative was getting married in the Salt Lake Temple.   We visited the Disney store which provided a remarkable amount of entertainment for our age range. Bethany and Elizabeth both exclaimed on how they would like to have the amazing princess dresses, but in their own size.

These are the resulting designs.

This dress is mainly based off of Bell's princess dress, she's Bethany's favorite princess so I figured it would be a good place to start.   The concept is similar to this dress on pinterest but with brighter colors.  I'm envisioning it in a deep red, but obviously that would be up to Bethany if it ever comes to pass.

I see this dress would be in soft blues and whites and is based off of a Disney play wedding dress*.  It was drawn with Elizabeth in mind since that was the play dress she liked the most.  It's origin is the reason behind the pinned up train on the back.  These are suppose to be outlandish princess dresses after all, there's plenty of room for fun.

Lastly I designed this dress for my friend Stephanie when she told me that she wasn't planning on getting a wedding dress.   Her reason for this being that she didn't really want a dress that she would only wear once, and just couldn't see spending that kind of money.  I figured that if this dress became a reality then we could just remove the second layer after the wedding.  This would transform it from wedding spectacular to "something that she could wear to church".

Of course, I haven't shown any of theses lovely women the dress designs I made with them in mind. As these doodles were were entirely for my own amusment. Meaning that I could be completely off base on what they would like.

Still, if any of you are interested call me.  Mmkay?  You can pay for the fabric and I'll do all the fun parts.

 On a slightly rambly side note I'm thinking about marketing myself as a cheap seamstress around the BYU bubble.   It would be something that I would really enjoy and it would allow the young woman around here to have the approximate wedding or random formal dress of their dreams.   At the same time it would allow me to get better at this awesome talent.

I'm a little nervous about it though because I continue to make small sloppy mistakes** on each project.  I'd hate to do that to someone on their special day. I also wouldn't be able to do any beading which is the big fad right now.

Without putting much thought into it I would probably charge two to three hundred dollars for each formal gown, plus material costs.   This is way cheaper than any wedding dress out there, and incredibly cheap for a custom made dress.  I think it could be a viable idea if I really worked for it.

Thoughts?

*which I can no longer find online
**see my previous post