The Floral Dress

I have chosen the floral dress as my vehicle for a nostalgic journey into my childhood. To remember a time when my mother made all my dresses and I enjoyed those light floral fabrics, which can still be revisited by looking at family photographs. To use the floral dress as a topic for my final degree piece has been a challenge for me. I worked on this project before Christmas and still felt there was work to be done here, but I was not sure in which direction I should go. The one thing I was sure of was that I wanted it to reflect my love of pattern. When I was out shopping in February I came across a book of dress dolls. Dress dolls are card dolls with paper or card dresses that you can attach to the doll using tabs. I remember making my own designs for clothes to dress the dolls in and I was instantly transported back to my childhood and rainy days in the caravan. I decided I should use the dress doll to reflect another aspect of my childhood, and that this new vehicle will be the perfect partner to the floral dress. However I didn’t want to use the doll itself but rather hint at the use for the dress by applying tabs to the 2D dress. To make the dress I used a readymade child’s dress pattern. After adjusting the length of the pattern I joined the bodice to the top to make a flat dress. Using a large sheet of paper to trace the pattern, I reduced each edge by 5/8ths of an inch (1.5cm) to remove the seam allowance. I reshaped the bottom of the dress to add animation to the form and then trimmed down the sides to achieve a narrower fit. I cut out a dress shape from a large silk screen print I had created called the ‘Floral Dress’. The print was not large enough to cut out the whole dress, so I lined up and cut out the bodice from another matching print. Challenges1. I have always made garments from paper patterns but it has been at least ten years since I last used a readymade pattern.2. I had to make the finished dress narrower because it was was wider than the 'Floral Dress' print. To finish the dress I traced and cut out the dress shape including tabs, in 2mm MDF board. I then painted the board with white emulsion before mounting the 'dress' onto the board. To disguise where the two silkscreen prints join, I glued a row of daisy trim to the dress, which is as popular today as it was in the 1960s.