Idiot’s Lantern Dress~ Part 2

Just to clarify, this post is about version 3 of my Idiot’s Lantern dress. Version 3 is made with fabric that has sequins already on it.

After working on my Snow White dress, I thought I’d better start on something “new” until the fabric I ordered for the dress arrived. I ended up working on the Idiot’s Lantern dress because I already made two of them, so it would be easy for me to assemble.

I ended up using the same exact bodice pattern I was using for the hand-sewn sequined bodice. (It was kind of a “If it isn’t broke, why fix it?” deal) I used the same modified New Look 6457 bodice pattern, but ended up adding an extra panel in the back of the dress so it would have more room for my growing torso. (I can never predict how my torso is going to grow so it’s just a safety measure)

I laid out the pattern pieces onto the sequined fabric and cut it out, trying to make all the sequin rows line up. After I was done and laid out the pieces the way I wanted to sew the bodice, it looked like this…

After that, I had to choose if I should use the pink satin or pink taffeta to use as a underlining for the sequined fabric. The sequined fabric is fairy thin and can show bold patterns laid underneath the fabric. So, to prevent this, I underlined the fabric. I’ve done underlining before so it wasn’t a huge task for me to do, but if you’d like to see a tutorial on how to do it here is the best one I found that almost exactly explains how I underlined the bodice.

I ended up choosing the taffeta and this is what a piece of the sequined fabric looks like with the taffeta underlining….

After that, I ironed fusible interfacing to the taffeta. Then I hand baste stitched the sequined fabric onto the taffeta and cut out the lining pieces. After that was done, it looked like this…

Then I sewed the bodice together.

Once the bodice was completely sewn, I began to work on the skirt. I used the pink satin for the over skirt and the same taffeta I used for the underlining for the underskirt. To make the over and under skirts, I cut three or four rectangle skirt pieces by measuring the length I wanted the skirt to be with some extra fabric for a hem and cutting it straight across. No curves were used in the creation of the skirt in order to make the skirt full with only three yards of fabric. 🙂

I didn’t take photos of the skirt while I was cutting it out, but I did take a photo of the underskirt…

It’s not much to look at, but that’s how I made it. I left the edge of the fabric on all the pieces of the skirt so I didn’t have to add a stitch to prevent fraying.

After that, I sewed the skirt panels together, hemmed both skirts, set aside the underskirt, pinned the over skirt to the bodice, and sewed it. After that, I repeated the same exact process to the under skirt.

After all that work, here’s what the front of the dress looked like…

And the back…

After I took the photos of the bodice/skirt, I finished the dress by lining the bodice with white lining fabric (I didn’t have any pink fabric at that time) and covered the sleeve’s raw edges with strips of pink taffeta.

Here’s how the dress looks 100% complete!

The dress alone….

The dress with the jacket on…

Now I need to finish the version 2 dress, which involves sewing sequins individually onto the bodice fabric. *sigh*