The objective of our Pattern II- Draping class is to construct an evening wear gown for the American Heart Association with the only requirement being that it be red. I find red to be a difficult color to work and design with just because it isn't a color I wear personally, so I began this project by sketching dresses envisioning them as I could use any color I wanted. My final design ended up being the one I had first sketched; an idea I had in my head for a long time. When I sketched, I did so without inspiration of much sort but upon observation realized that the illustration resembled a rib cage. I then became inspired by my first sketch for all the sketches afterward and illustrated several gowns based on different parts of the human anatomy. Still, I returned to the first sketch time and again. I went with it and chose to use blood reds and nudes as the colors even though I saw it as white. In New York, I ended up finding an iridescent chiffon thats color ways were nude and red. I used that as well as red silk charmuse and leather for the center piece of the dress. The most difficult, rather unconventional methods; but learning expierences, while making this dress were shaving down the leather myself, using cording to gather the front and back of the skirt, and creating the tubes through hours of rotary cutting, sewing, triming, ironing, and turning them inside out. Pictured below, I initially had troubles with the dress but fixed them for the dress to be entered into the American Heart Association Red Dress show and the Philadelphia University Fashion Show.
After my fall semester of 2013 ended, I returned to my Red Dress in the spring of 2014 and fixed all of my mistakes during spring break. The biggest issue with the final product was the result of the dress involving the over skirt made of chiffon. My preliminary chiffon I used for my muslins had a width of 60 inches whereas my final had a width of 45. I completed the dress while not accounting for this fact and had to fix the over skirt after to look as I had originally intended. The current product is pictured below:
