Behind the Scenes - Tweed Tulip Dress - Sketching, pattern-making, and sewing

January 4, 2020

Behind the Scenes – Tweed Tulip Dress – Sketching, pattern-making, and sewing

Kelly Ann Sizler Designs – Princess Seam Sweetheart Neck Tulip Hem Dress

This tulip hem design idea originally came to me in skirt form. But then I found this black, cream, and pink tweed fabric at the FabScra p store and I couldn’t resist making it into a dress version perfect for the office!

*Tweed fabric for my Tulip Dress project with cream, pink, and black threads from the FabScrap store.*

First I needed to get the initial idea out with a rough hand sketch.

*Hand drawn fashion figure sketch of my Tweed Tulip dress design, by Kelly Ann Sizler*

I’m not going to lie, I usually do this a bunch of times after the initial idea pops into my head. I’ll draw doodles and rough sketches while I’m on hold on the phone at work or just watching TV at home. It’s kind of like an itch you can’t scratch and I just need to get it figured out over and over until I know exactly what I want and how I’m going to make it. I like to walk around with small little sketch books fo this reason.

*One of my many fashion sketches of my Tulip dress, I used this one as a bookmark for a while, by Kelly Ann Sizler*

After the initial sketch, I drew a flat sketch in Adobe Illustrator. This is the type of sketch that I would do at my jobs in the industry to show buyers and send to factories overseas.

*Adobe Illustrator flat fashion sketches of my Tulip Dress Design with fabric rendered version, by Kelly Ann Sizler*

Once the idea and plan were finalized it was time to start working on the pattern. Making a new garment requires multiple sessions of pattern making and fittings. I already had a similar skirt pattern so I first got to work on making a basic bodice to go with the skirt.

After fitting the bodice I made some adjustments to the pattern and then made a new mock up of the full dress with the skirt. It wasn’t too bad but there were definitely still some fit adjustments to be made. It’s always fun to see the garment start coming together though! I also still needed to add the design details to the top, like the sweetheart neckline and to draft a sleeve pattern. I like to do this part after the bodice and armhole are fitted properly, since I didn’t have a sleeve pattern already made to fit myself.

After finishing this round of pattern adjustments I made up another full mock up to see how it looked and fit, so this is now mock up #3. Even yet, there were still a few more fit adjustments to the armhole, sleeve, and at the bottom of the back skirt. I was getting a little anxious to get to the final garment so I just made a half bodice mock up to make sure these alterations weren’t crazy looking on the top. I was pretty confident that the skirt adjustments would work out fine. I probably could’ve done more fittings but at a certain point you have to draw the line somewhere. Although, in reality, I wish I would’ve just done one more full mock up because I had to do a couple of fittings and adjustments on the final garment. Just something to keep in mind for the next project!

Below is a time lapse video of my design process from initial sketch, to flat sketch, to pattern making and fittings, to final garment sewing!

Fun Fact: The pattern making and sewing portions of this video are increased to speeds 100x faster than the original in order to make the video as short as possible. I didn’t even get all the sewing in because my phone stopped recording.

It’s definitely a process but at the end of the day (or weeks of days after work) the final product is worth it!

I wore the dress to work and as I was walking with a coworker at lunch a woman ran up to me exclaiming, “I love your dress!” I knew she wanted to know where to get it, that’s the main reason people compliment each other, but it was so exciting to be able to respond with “thank you, I made it.”

It made my day!