Doris Day

As today is Mother’s Day I have decided to show you all my very special Graceful Dress. Now apart from all the things my mum has done for me over the years! Her VERY important job during the graceful period is to cut the length of my skirt. Something she dreads, no doubt!!!

This years Graceful Dress was inspired by the very talented Doris Day who ascended to fame in the forty’s and fifty’s as a singer and actor. Not only is she an inspirational person, but also she oozes elegance and style in her own unique way.

The first thing to decide on for this Graceful dress was the colour, which was pretty easy as white seemed to be her main colour. Though at one stage I was thinking of using a light aqua blue, but the colour didn’t really suit me.

What I knew I wanted for this Graceful dress was a side spilt in the skirt and an embellished sash that covered my right shoulder. But how that was all going to happen was going to take some playing, as I wasn’t too sure how the front vision would style the back. Though that is something that can be figured out once the leotard was made.

The base leotard for this graceful dress is one of my classic designs, which I base all my own leotards off. Because of my body shape, I have found that I can only have five panels across the front; any more and it just doesn’t look that flattering.

Decorating time!

To create the sash like vision I have used white Lycra mesh, which has been pleated and tacked on. This sash was molded over the shoulder and then gathered together just over the shoulder. Then the lace was pieced on, for the lace I wanted it to look like it was coming off in soft points from the sash.

Here is a picture of the lace, before the blinging occurred!!

I ended up keeping the embellishments very fitting the era that Doris Day was in her prime… i.e. NO Glitter! Were there was lace, there was no glitter used to decorate. Just stones, diamantes, and stretch and chain diamantes. I only used glitter were the white meets the flesh.

If you would like to know it took me about eight hours to do all the hand sewing and gluing, as there is a lot of detail in there!!

What I decided to do with the back was to mould the sash to stop just over the shoulder. I could have continued the sash down the back, but I thought this would be too much. So instead I used stretch diamantes to continue on the line across the back and added some embellished lace on the left hand side.

So here it is… My very special and extremely detail, Doris Day Graceful Dress x

xx