I thought it might be pretty cool to do my own Tardis dress, believe me there are many many many variations on this, some simple, some complex like the one previously mentioned. Some closer and some further from the Dr. Who inspired theme. I've been sewing since I was roughly 12 so I'm not intimidated by many a sewing projects but I have little experience in design, so my initial plan was to take a dropped waist dress and sew on some pocket "windows" and call it a day. That's when I came across this beauty:
I did some more digging and discovered this was a Simplicity pattern! I went to Fabricland only to find they don't sell Simplicity anymore :( I looked online then and ordered it but was extremely sad when I received notification that shipping was going to take 7 - 12 BUSINESS DAYS!!! This was for sure going to arrive after Halloween.
So I all but gave up and figured I'd have to do the simpler version I'd designed and run with it when one day I received notification of a package at the post office. I was a bit confused because I wasn't expecting anything at that time but lo and behold it was my pattern only 4 days after I'd ordered it, not 4 business days either.
Two nights ago I picked up the material, a polycotton, the pattern recommended pure cotton but the polycotton was on sale and it holds both it's colour and shape better. The pattern also called for canvas for the bodice and 12 packages of double fold 1/2" bias tape.
There were a few other simple notions called up, ribbon, elastic, lace for the bodice (haven't bought this yet because I don't know what kind of lace or where it's going on the bodice), bones (I wasn't sure if I needed cased or uncased so I opted to wait) and grommets. Now the pattern calls for 5/8" gromments times like 42. 5/8" ID grommets is gigantic.... 5/16" looked more like the photo but Fabricland only had that size in white so I'll check Michaels on the weekend. As for the bones I read the pattern and it says cut strips of material to case the bones, now the difference in prince for cased vs. uncased bones I think was 1.5$/m. I'm going to wait buying this because I need quite a few metres so if it so I may wait till I need to install it and see if I have enough remaining bias tape and use that instead of cutting cloth strips. Then I can use uncased bones.
I got all the cloth home and pre-washed it and pre-shrunk it :) I also cut all the pattern pieces out (took a little two hours but I watched TV as I cut, hello Being Mary Jane!)
I'm curious to see how this pans out because it calls up a canvas for the bodice.... it looks pretty wrinkled after I washed it which means IRONING :(
