Hey, it’s me Hannah.

In one week I am meeting up with some fellow fantasy creators for Community Content Day. The theme of which is Gowns and Glamour. And while I am filled to the brim with glamor, I don’t have a gown, so I’m making one. My goal here is to look like a princess Cel, or @coppercosmonaut on Instagram, booked this beautiful venue in Smithfield, Virginia, called Windsor Castle Park.

Based on the inspiration boards they shared with us, I’ve decided to go with a free dress pattern from Mood, the Bridgerton inspired dress, which I will link below. So I will be making a couple updates to the pattern to include an additional ruffle to the bottom of the skirt. I also want to make a few updates to the sleeve to remove the lining.

So just the sheer puff sleeve remains. I might even try to extend that depending on how much fabric I have. Speaking of fabric, I’ve decided to go with this gold sort of sparkly, shimmery tulle and this cream colored, silky fabric for the lining. Additionally, for the sleeves and the waist, I do have this really pretty ribbon that I’m excited to put on.

So with that, I have seven days to get this done, so I’m going to get to work.

Okay. Welcome to day two. Hannah. All you did in day one was cut fabric. Well, that’s because cutting fabric is physically, emotionally and spiritually draining. We got that done. We’re ready for day two. Today should be a little bit more productive, and we might be able to start seeing our dress come together. So today we’re going to start by placing our bodice pieces of fabric together, face up, with the overlay on top.

Fabric B on top. We’re going to sew our darts as if it was just one piece of fabric. And then we are going to connect the bodice pieces, the front piece and the back pieces at the shoulder seam. And then from there, the side seams so easy enough. Once we have that completed, we can start looking at the skirt.

All right. Well, the construction is there. Already a little concerned about the size. We’re putting up quite a fight to get that put together. And I still have to add a zipper. I’m going to try to keep going because that’s who I am and we’ll just see how it goes. I do have I have a little bit of extra fabric so that I can potentially do another bodice piece.

These pieces are pretty small. I might be redoing this, but hey, that’s all part of the learning process. Okay. We’ll see. Okay. Today’s about to be a really productive day. We have our sleeve partially complete. We still need to baste and sew on the ribbon for the bottom of the sleeve to cinch it up a little bit and add an extra little poof.

And then we will turn our attention to the skirts. And if we’re lucky, if today goes well, we’ll be able to combine all of it and actually see the structure of our dress. I’m trying to figure out how much longer I want to make it. With the addition of a ruffle, I did find another free pattern on Mood for a different dress that had a skirt that I think might meet my needs a little bit better.

So we might end up recutting the fabric in order to match that pattern instead. But TBD. We’ll see how how this goes. We’ll see how the bodice ends up fitting once we have the pieces together. I’m probably going to just baste in the zipper to make sure that it will fit. That’s another piece of the puzzle we’re going to have to finish up today.

And then, yeah, we’ll see how it goes. Pinning the sleeves is harder than anticipated. I’m not positive that the floof, the puffiness on each sleeve will be the same, but I figured it out. And now on to whether or not this bodice is going to fit me. So I might have to redo the bodice, so I’m kind of planning for that a little bit.

I am going to put a lining on the inside of the bodice at some point towards the end kind of finish off the like frayed edges. Yeah, for now, I’m just going to see if we can construct this in a way that I will be able to wear it. And if not, we will try again on the bodice with the slightly bigger size from the pattern.

Wish me luck. Okay. I’ve redone the bodice. This one, I feel a lot more confident about getting the fabric to touch back there. So now I’m going to reattach the sleeves. Reattach the outer layer of the skirt, and then we start working on final touches. We’re almost there. We have two days left. I bought some more tulle, because I was not happy with the amount of tool on the skirt.

So we’re going to add hopefully 2 to 3 more layers of tulle on the skirt and hopefully that’ll poof it out a little bit. And then from there, I’m going to add a lining to the bodice and I’m going to see if I need to add a lining to the skirt. You can definitely kind of see through it now as it is, but depending on where we land with the layers of tulle we might not necessarily need to add a lining. The pattern doesn’t call for a lining on the skirt, but it’s not it’s not one of those photoshoots.

Maybe we’ll do something like that down the road, but for now, I’m looking for a little bit of extra modesty. Might add a lining to the skirt. From there we will go ahead and add a zipper to the back and finish up this final seam. I’m feeling a lot better about the fit now that I’ve increased the size of the bodice and double checked my skirt size, which I had gotten wrong.

So I’m glad I had a little bit of the extra under layer fabric lying around so that I could recut that and make sure it was the right size. So I’m feeling a lot better about the fit. Once we have the zipper in the back seam added, we are going to add a circular ruffle to the bottom of the skirt to increase the length it’s currently knee length and then once we’re done with that, I think construction will be complete and we can work on finishing touches with the final piece of ribbon on the sleeves, piece of ribbon at the bottom of the bodice, and possibly another piece of ribbon at the ruffle.

Still not sure about that. Just kind of gonna play around with it. Then we’re hemmed, and then we’re done. So let’s get to making. So yesterday I finished adding all the tulle. I added a lining to the skirt underlay I added a zipper. It fits. I tried it on it all technically fits, though it’s kind of hard to get in and out of.

I think next time I will probably go with a longer zipper. I started adding a lining to the bodice. I have it stitched to the neckline and I’m now stitching to the armholes and the bottom of the bodice. So that’s what I’m going to focus on for the rest of this morning. And then we will start working on the final touches, adding a ruffle, adding the ribbon to the bodice, adding the ribbon to the sleeves, and then a hem and then we get to call it a day and I have less than 24 hours.

Let’s go. Okay. We finished the lining. Now we are going to start working on the bottom of the skirt and I’m going to continue to bite the bullet on doing the stuff that I don’t really enjoy, like the lining and get into hemming the underlayer and the skirt lining. I think I’m going to go ahead and hem them together.

There’s no reason not to just get that done as quickly as possible, and then we can start working on the tulle ruffle at the bottom of the skirt. So I’m really looking forward to that. That’s gonna be a fun thing to do. Then we will start working on the sleeve and under bodice detail, the ribbon detail, and then by gosh, we might be done.

Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly and that I can get this done in time. Wish me luck. The hem is done. So now I’m working on attaching the ruffle. I am kind of winging it and planning on just doing a French seam. That’s what I’m going to try and we’ll see how it goes. I finished. I’m so excited.

I’m very pleased with it. I’m going to show you guys at the event tomorrow. I’ll do a full reveal. I’m going to go start packing some stuff. See you guys tomorrow. Just wow what an amazing weekend. I had so much fun. I met some amazing people, made some really cool connections and I’m really looking forward to working together with these folks again in the future.

I now know how a community content event works and I gained so much insight into what it means to be a model and to be a photographer at an event like this one. I’ve learned so much about the storytelling and and the goal behind these photoshoots. And of course, I’ve learned so much through this project as a sewist, I am learning a lot about ease. The whole weekend I was struggling to get in and out of this dress and to even get the dress on my mannequin, I had to go ahead and commit to a longer zipper, which I do plan to install.

That said, everything else about the dress fit perfectly. I was very pleased with it. My only other complaint is that I didn’t have full range of motion with the sleeves. I had a lot of motion, but I did not have full range of motion and I did end up ripping the armpit of the right sleeve. So that will be something I’ll need to fix and I do intend to fix all of this and wear this dress again.

I enjoyed it so much. I truly felt like a princess, which was my goal. And I’ve learned a lot about shooting and editing by creating this video. If you had as much fun as I did, it would mean the world to me if you would like and subscribe. And if you do, I’ll see you again in two weeks for my next video.

Talk soon