Aristocratic Dress Part 1

And the first item of clothing for 2014 will be . . .

 An aristocratic shirt dress, inspired by RTBU and Vlad from Eiyuu Senki. I haven't had much time to sew because of assignments: I had assignments on animal health and welfare, behaviour, nutrition, and biology, not to mention my long-term research project (it's not all bad. My project means that I have to visit a lot of sanctuaries, so I see many puppies and dogs) 

The first part of this project was figuring out the pattern. The dress from RTBU has a princess seam, but I thought darts would be easier, and I've seen similar projects that didn't use a princess seam, like this one

To save myself some time, I unpicked the seams of a shirt that I had lying around, and traced it to make my pattern.

That's what I got. I just placed tracing paper over the top and traced what I saw. The darts were a little tricky to see, but I managed all right. I think this type of diamond-shaped dart is called a French dart.

I got lucky with the sleeve pattern. The sleeve is a puff sleeve with some flare at the cuff. I am basing my design more on Vlad's sleeve than the RTBU sleeves. I already had a puff sleeve pattern, so I simple made it long enough for my arms.

 I haven't made the skirt yet, but it's just two or three circle skirt with horse hair braid on the hem, and gathered at the top. You end with with a very ruffled skirt, sort of like this one:

Such ruffles. Much horse hair braid. Many sewings. 

I'm going to use cotton poplin for this, mainly because it was inexpensive and has a matte appearance. I've washed it to prevent colours running (that happened the first time I washed my Sailor Mars skirt: everything went pink) and to stop the material from shrinking when I wash the dress.