Chiffon dresses

I am slowly making progress on the chiffon dresses and rainbow colored skirts. What appeared to be relatively easy and straight forward was much more challenging than I thought. Maybe because it is the end of the school year/season, maybe because I simply underestimated the complexity of the task but for some reason progress is painfully slow.

I first made the mistake of miscalculating the amount of fabric needed for the circle skirts. I ended up with 6 half circles instead of 6 circle skirts. Thankfully that problem was easily solved and the skirts only required one fitting. Once the little girls were wearing them, they were so pretty and worth all the effort.

 The dresses turned out to be another matter. I started by pleating the chiffon for the bodice and broke several needles. This should not happen with a light fabric like chiffon but it did. After taking the pleater apart, and adding new needles it did not take long to re-pleat the fabric.

Adding new needles to the smocking

Next I managed to do something to my serger and it made a horrible rattling noise. Again, this is not supposed to happen with a light fabric such as chiffon but after some tinkering the noise went away and so I sewed on.
I decided to use French seams because I thought it would look better and be more durable. French seams do look better on chiffon but they make altering difficult. You also need to take into account that they reduce the size of the garment more than regular seams. I forgot both these things and ended up, unpicking the dresses several times.
I had drawn a new pattern because these dresses were meant for young women rather than children. This meant that the dresses needed some way of opening them, so as to be able to put them on (minor detail). After some fiddling, I worked out a way to open them under the arm, without distorting the lines of the ruching. This meant that I had to back smock (add smocking stitches invisibly to the back of the bodice front and back) all the rows of pleating, which takes a lot of time but in the end I think the result was better.

back of chiffon dress

front of chiffon dress

The final piece of equipment to give out was my ruffler; it just seemed to get stuck. After cleaning and oiling it, the ruffler was back to "normal" and I finally was able to assemble the dresses.

sky blue chiffon dress

lilac chiffon dress with headpiece

The dresses have little flounced sleeves and will be worn over leotards. I will also add some matching flowers to the left shoulder.
Despite all the hassles, I was very happy with the results and the dancers looked beautiful in their flowing dresses.
I think that is the best past of a project: if you can keep going through some (minor) frustrations to see the results at the end. A happy smiling dancer makes it all worth while.

Start of flower circlets

Flower circlet

 Finally I assembled the flower circlets, using directions from Claudia Folts' (Tutu.com) book Finishing touches. I hand dyed some of the silk flowers light blue or lilac to match the dresses, sewed on some little loops so that the circlets could be pinned onto the dancer's hair and added hot-fix Swarovski crystals in colors to match the flowers.