Ruffles, part 1

I picked up a ruffling foot so I wouldn't have to hand gather the material for each layer of the dress. Getting a ruffling foot to work is not the easiest thing in the world, but once I finally managed to get it going and was chugging along, the sewing machine came apart. Apparently, a spring in the needle holder came loose. I packed up the machine, took it to the repair shop and was back in business after a fairly short break. This weekend, I managed to get the dark pink ruffled and all three bottom ruffles on the dress. I can now move on to the next color.

Each ruffle was pinned on right side to the dress, pointed up, then sewn this way. After being sewn on, the ruffles were hand pressed toward the hem of the skirt and top stitched down.

Kaylee Layer Cake Dress

Ivy wants a Kaylee dress for TeslaCon in November. I figure this gives me about 9 months to work on it. We briefly discussed this as a possibility after the last con, but as of today started making some serious plans to undertake this project. I figure Ivy and I can work on it together and we can see what we come up with. The initial steps of the project are involving a bunch of google searches for who has done this dress and their suggestions. However, I have yet to find anyone that did the project for a pre-teen. It is a little crazy to undertake this for someone of her age, but I figure any costume done for her can be worn by her younger sister in a few years.

So far, I have found some well-documented costume constructions of this dress:

Caitlin's Costume Closet - Kaylee's fluffy Shindig Dress

Kaylee's Fluffy Layer Cake Shindig Dress

And a wonderful image reference page at The Costumer's Guide to Movie Costumes.

We don't currently own a dress form, I am thinking of buying one just to make this construction a bit easier. I also am torn beside buying the hoop skirt and making one. If I can find one for close to what the boning will cost, I will just buy it.

My plans are to keep this blog as a record of my progress and notes. Hopefully I can keep up with it!