Something different

I have started work on a new dress. Hardly out of the ordinary for me, but there are a couple of things which make this one a little unusual. First, it's black. The only completed plain black item ever to appear on this blog is a skirt which didn't even get its own post, and my previous attempt to make a black dress, Butterick 7598, has languished in the UFO pile for ages. But suddenly, I felt the urge to make a new black dress after over a decade of not wearing the colour. Second, possibly inspired by the Bedazzled exhibition, I decided to include some sort of embellished element.

I couldn't find any fabric I liked on the roll in my local fabric shop, but then I spotted this remnant. It's embossed in a pattern of circles, and has a very slight sheen. Unfortunately, the pattern is not on the crosswise grain (a common issue with remnants, I find), so I am cutting out in line with the circles and hoping for the best.

The fabric with the grain aligned to my cutting board

The obvious thing with remnants is that you have to work with what you've got, and in this case, I don't have a lot. My first idea was to make another Butterick 6866 view B, but that skirt takes a lot of fabric.

I have less than 3m of fabric . . .

. . . and this pattern needs far more than that

Instead, I have just cut out the bodice pieces for now, excluding the facings as I'm going to line the dress. Once the bodice is made up, I will find a suitable skirt pattern for the fabric I have left.

For the embellishment, I'm using black sequins in satin and shiny finishes. So far, I've made buttons for the bodice using square sequins sewn in a chequerboard effect and wrapped over a base of scrap perspex.

I'm on a bit of a fancy button roll!

The plan is to make the lower curved section out of fabric the wrong side up and covered with round sequins. Unfortunately, it's a long time since I have worked with sequins, and I had forgotten just how long it takes!

Thread-traced pattern piece prepped for embellishing

My (limited) progress so far

Hopefully I will get faster as I get more practice.