Far, far away – surprise project

The students in Stockholm made bra dresses and many of them finished the dress in class. Here are our students. Three from Sweden and one from Finnland.

So what’s a bra dress…..you will soon see. But I will describe it as a dress with bra cups visible on the exterior of the dress. The cups are made of pre formed foam and the skirt flows out from under the cups. The straps go over the shoulder and fasten at the back, or can cross cross. 

The dress can be short like a top, full length or anywhere in between. It can be used as nightwear, club wear, evening wear, as a cocktail dress, or the perfect summer dress for a garden party. It can be worn with a bolero or shrug over top for dinner at the captain’ table.

If made from other fabrics, it can also be worn as an undergarment under a slinky or bias cut dress. No lumps or bumps where your slip meets your tummy! Whatever you use this dress for, I think the students agree it is very versatile.

We drafted the pattern yesterday afternoon, and they cut out the fabric. 

Then they started covering foam cups

Then they sewed the cup cover fabric to the cups

Oh, I almost forgot…before sewing the cup cover to the cup…they had to turn the tube straps.

Some of the tubes turned out to be impossible to turn so we had to recruit Bodil. Still no luck, even with the metal latch hook and a Turn-it-all. Finally we sewed the tube shut by hand. Poor Bodil…I am sure all that hand sewing wasn’t easy!

Anyone who takes these classes already has a great deal of sewing skill so it is never surprising when they don’t do the “class” dress but have to kick it up a notch! Amber used lace in one continuous piece over the cup and up the strap.

PLUS….she decided the dress should have a godet…a godet with lace trim no less!

Here’s a close up of the great mitering job Amber did! This will be in the back of the dress. The dress is full length so she will swoosh into the room, for sure! The lace is perfectly mirrored from one side to the other too!

The students also learned how to do a Dior rose. Here is Amber’s cups and what the front should look like when finished

So here are three of the finished bra dresses! First here is Marine’s dress. I love this fabric! We cross-crossed her straps in the back for extra oomph.

Next is Jenny’s dress with the pink and white polka dots. That girl loves polka dots! ( a girl after my own heart!) she also did the white with black polka dot foam cup bra yesterday.

Finally, here is Karin’s top. She decided to make a shorter version of the dress so it would be more versatile in her wardrobe. The richness of the colour isn’t apparent here, but this is a really deep purple colour. The sewing is extremely well done too!

Amber is still working on her dress but if she gets it done in the evenings, I will post a picture of it.

I don’t know if you noticed…and you can zoom in if you want to…but there is no stitching around the wire line to hold the channeling down around the cup. So how did they stitch the channel down without sewing through the fabric? That’s a bit of bra magic I call “invisible topstitching”. Looks like they all learned that lesson very well!