2024 has been off to a great start, but for the last few months I’ve been drowning in a sort of lethargic no where’s land when it came to sewing. What do you do when your sewjo is hopelessly lost and dead, but you have all the free time in the world to sew for once? This was the prospect I’d been faced with the last few months. I was in-between jobs, having decided to take a few months off after my last job moved to Tennessee. With time and plenty of money to trick off on fabric, I just could not find the creativity I needed to get to sewing on anything that seemed to make me excited. I eventually simply stopped trying to create. I focused instead on decluttering the house and truly resting my mind, hoping that that too might spark something. The reset didn’t happen until right as the New Year was coming in and I found myself mentally having a funeral for my sewjo. I pictured myself dressed in the most theatrical black dress like a grieving widow and even pictured the casket being lowered in the ground. Morbid in a sense I know, but visualizing things are a form of manifestation that is extremely powerful. I use this practice in all areas of my life as you have to visual what you want in order to manifest it
PROJECT DETAILS:
Sweater Dress with an Evening Dress Influence: Self-Drafted pattern. Once I had the mental funeral for my lost creativity, the ideas began to flow and majorly. What arrived was the idea of an evening gown, but as a sweater dress. I wanted the lines of an evening gown, but with the ease and wearability of a sweater dress. This is one of the beauties of being able to sew and create garments. If you can think it and draft it, you can create it. I’m not a pattern maker by a stretch, but it’s something I’ve been building my skillset slowly in, since you have to be able to understand the premise of pattern making in order to create original designs from scratch. One of the things I have learned over the years, is that you can fudge this skillset a bit, if you understand pattern construction and basic pattern blocks. It’s one of the easiest ways to begin pattern drafting. Begin with patterns, commercial, indie or otherwise as your base, or you can create your own slopers based off your body measurements that serve as your pattern base and create pieces from those. I use a combination of all the above when it comes to pattern drafting. I start with base pattern pieces and then modify them to fit my needs. I’ve found a couple of great pattern making textbooks from fashion school curriculums over the years that has helped tremendously. Most importantly you have to be willing to make as many muslins as needed until you get your pattern fit and design just right.
FABRIC – This fabric is surprisingly heavy, but is one of the best quality ponte knits I’ve ever run across. I’ve seen this fabric go for $35 or more a yard online, but thanks to the Los Angeles Fashion District, I snagged it for $2 a yard and so I bought myself 10 yards of it, since it was only 45” wide. With the circle dress piece of this dress, I knew I would have to be creative, since circle skirts always eat up a ton of fabric. With only a couple of mishaps (Two sets of sleeves later) along the way to creation, I used almost all 10 yards. I believe I was left with maybe a yard and some change once I was one cutting out everything.
STYLE – I wearing my favorite lipstick with a pair of earrings that I found in a flea market in Fiji during my last birthday trip with a pair Sam Edelman burgundy red colored platform sandal heels. It was wash day, so my hair shrank and fro’d it’s way to this crowning glory, and I just let it be as is, though my attempt to wrangle it some with a hair band went unnoticed since my hair decided to eat that too lol.
Nikki Nicole Sew 