Elegant Prom Dress

Having finished exams, with the joy of an empty summer stretching out before me, I finally had the time to sew things I would normally just end up buying. I had a vision in my head of a pretty, elegant dress (which was not inspired by the dress from Atonement but it has been brought to my attention that there are some similarities). I'm really pleased with how it turned out - I feel very elegant wearing it.

Unfortunately due to changes in the coronavirus restrictions in the UK, our prom had to be cancelled. But I still want to show off the dress, so I'm organising a 'fake prom' at my house for when restrictions are eased. Just like Cinderella, I shall go to the ball (even if the ball happens to be in my kitchen). All that is left to do now is source some mini umbrellas for cocktails... and write the rest of this Instructable!

I started off the design for the top part of the dress by searching on the internet for a free bralette pattern. I experimented with different iterations building off of this, eventually settling on one that fit my body. To ensure that this actually fit well, I made a bralette top with this design. The original top had a hook and eye closure at the back, but this made the back have a closure with some baggy and some loose parts - so for the dress itself I decided on a lace up bodice style back, which had the added benefit of being adjustable (perhaps for after dinner!).

The skirt was just a basic half circle skirt, and I will go into more detail on how I found the dimensions for this in a later step.

I pinned the cup pattern to the fabric, which was folded over to form eight layers, 4 pieces for the lining and 4 for the outside. I then paired them up and sewed along the curved edge to form one whole cup piece. At this point I held them up against my body to check that nothing had gone drastically wrong with the sizing - if you were making this for the first time I would recommend only cutting out 2 pieces at first, making a cup and seeing if it fits.

It was at this point that I realised the fabric I was working with was not going to play nice. It was a fairly cheap satin, and this meant that not only did it slip around a lot, but also that sometimes when I sewed it would pull at a thread in the fabric. This was very annoying but I couldn't work out a way to get around it.

There are lots of tubes required for this dress:

• 2 long ones to tie around your neck
• 1 very long one to thread through the back and tie it up
• 6 small pieces to form the loops on the back

Instead of calculating exact lengths, I just made some new tubes that were the length of the fabric I had bought as and when it was needed.

To ensure that my tubes were the same thickness all the way along, I made a small snip in the fabric at my desired width and ripped it. I then folded it in half and lined up the folded edge with the edge of the machine foot and sewed all the way down. I cut off the excess so it would not be too bulky.

I then tied a long piece of thread to a small safety pin, and threaded the safety pin all the way through the tube. I attached the safety pin to the end of the tube and then pushed the fabric inwards. Using the long piece of thread to help me, I pulled the safety pin through, turning the tube inside out in the process.

This was a little bit fiddly to do so I had to have quite a lot of patience, but it wasn't especially difficult once I had got going. You could use some ribbon, or anything else that already has finished sides if this seems too difficult!

I placed the outside and lining cup pieces right sides together and pinned along the edges (lots of pins were required, the fabric was very slippery). I made sure to pin a tube at the point of the cup in between the two layers so that when I turned it inside out it would form the straps of the dress, although at this point it just looked like a triangle on a long tube. I then repeated this for the other cup, and turned them both inside out.

I would have pressed them at this point but when I tried ironing a tester piece of fabric it ended up looking worse than it had started, so I decided to just accept a few wrinkles here and there.

I then placed the sewed cup pieces with the right sides together, in a line about an inch from the corner. I then held it up against my body and adjusted, sewing it further to the left to make it smaller.

I then cut two rectangles to approximately my waist measurement long (with some extra added that could be cut off later), and the distance from below my bust to my waist deep (again with some extra added). I then placed these pieces right sides together, with the cup pieces pinned in the middle. This process meant I had no raw edges from the cups.

The important thing I found here was to make sure the centre of the rectangles lined up with the centre of the cups - as I had some extra on either end I could just trim it to ensure it was properly centred.

At this stage I, unsurprisingly, held it up against my body! I checked how far I would want it to go round at the back and cut it (with seam allowance added)

I made another tube and cut it into six small pieces. I folded three of these in half and pinned them to the right side of one of the rectangle ends, with the fold facing towards the cups. I then basted these in place, and afterwards sewed the ends of the two rectangles right sides together, with these pieces sandwiched between. I repeated this on the other side. Again, this meant no raw edges on the back - and ended up with a piece that only had raw edges at the bottom (which would later be attached to the skirt).

For the skirt piece of the dress I decided to use a half circle skirt pattern. This was enough to give it some shape, but with a full circle skirt it would have been a ridiculous quantity of fabric.

I folded the fabric in half to form two large squares. I then used a circle skirt calculator to work out how large to make the waist - you could just use some simple maths. I made the length as long as I could fit (so almost the width of the squares I had formed).

I used a tape measure and a pen to mark out where I needed to cut. I made the mistake of cutting out my waist before measuring out the length - I would recommend measuring and cutting the length first because then you can do it from the centre of the circle. It was quite a large semicircle to cut so I ended up folding it over a few times to ensure symmetry.

I ended up with one very large semicircle (you could do it with two smaller quarter circles if your fabric was not wide enough but this would involve extra sewing).

I then pinned the right side of the skirt and top parts together, aligning their centres. This left me with a raw edge at the top of the skirt, which I sorted out later (but in future would probably sort out here, it would have been neater to deal with it earlier.

At the back I attached the zip - first sewing a small piece to the end of the zip so it was neater, also folding over the top ends of the zip and sewing them down. The I just sewed either side of the zip to the back edges of the dress.

After that, I went ahead and sewed the rest of the back of the dress down - unfortunately it ended up a bit puckered. I unpicked it and sewed it again but it still puckered - I think this was to do with the pulls in the fabric. I don't know enough about fabrics to know how this could be avoided, but I don't think the same would have happened if I was using a heavier weight fabric, and possibly just a more expensive one! (this one only cost about £3 a metre)

This step was quite fiddly and I'm still not entirely satisfied with the finish. I cut a rectangle to go on either side of the back of the dress, at the top of the skirt where there was a raw edge. I then folded and rolled this over and stitched it down, this would have been much easier had I done it as an addition to the top piece.

I made the rest of the dress in one day, but left hemming the bottom because I couldn't decide how long I wanted the dress. I ultimately decided that the longer it was the better, so just evened out any rough cutting with my scissors.

Hemming the bottom of the skirt was difficult! I couldn't iron the fabric down so I had to double fold and use a lot of pins, the fabric didn't want to cooperate, and it was about a mile long. But eventually I managed it, and because of the length of the skirt it doesn't matter if it is slightly wonky.

I then folded the ends of all of the tubes inwards, using a needle to help with the poking, so no raw edges were exposed. I then hand stitched the ends with small tight stitches.

Ta da! The dress is finished. I may or may not be guilty of showing pictures of it to anyone who will look - including the man who sold me the fabric for it (shout-out to Saeed's Fabrics!). I have not yet had the opportunity to give it a proper outing, but I know that if I ever need to dress up I have the perfect thing to wear.

It was surprisingly easy to make this dress considering I had a) very little experience of making dresses, or any clothing, and b) no pattern! If I did it again I would put a bit more thought into the back of the skirt - make the zip a bit less wonky and the finishing a bit neater, but other than that I'm very pleased.