Twenties Style Satin Dress

There's going to be a Charleston themed photshoot later this month, and I really wanted t try my hand at a flapper dress, inspired by one of Threadbanger videos:

The pattern is very simple: I measured my overbust, bust and hips, and drafted a pattern. Since the dresses in the twenties were not fitted, this was quite simple to do.

I wanted to use cloth that I already had rather than buying new material. I had a look and found this satin material that I found in a bargain bin

Here's what's left of it. I'm not very good at taking progress photos. As you can see, it's satin with an Oriental inspired print. Now that I think about it, it looks like the designer really wanted a kimono inspired print, and didn't know which one to choose - so they put all the prints on the fabric.

I ended up using the blue/grey end of the fabric as the top, ending the dress at the brown scalloped shape.

 I used plain black lining, but to make it look prettier, I made the top part of the lining from scraps of the outer material. There's interfacing ironed on to it for shape.

 I faced the lining and main dress right sides together and sewed around the neckline, snipped the corners, then turned it right sides out and ironed it to death. I then finished one armhole with bias tape. The other one didn't get finished until I sewed in an invisible zip.

 The next step was the hemline. I wanted to try using the brown curved shape as the hemline, so that it would have a scalloped appearance. I cut off the excess, used watered down glue to stop the edge from fraying (if you do this, be careful. don't get the glue on the rest of the dress, because you will ruin it. And you will cry). Since this fabric is super slippery, I placed tissue paper under the material to make it easier to slide through the machine, using a tiny zigzag stitch to finish the edge.

Here's the finished dress. I'm not sure how 'twenties' it looks, but I'm pleased with how neat it looks.