Winter Wedding Coat

As promised the Wedding Coat I designed for Tracey who got married 28th December 2011

Idea for Design Brief

The brief was a Victorian Riding Jacket with a hood and that would also keep her warm. We were not sure what the weather would be like on the day, December isn't known for it's scorching sunshine up north in the UK :-), after 3 design developments here is my creation,

Photography by Picture U, Carlisle

Back Pleat

Back

Side with Hood Up

Side View

I used diamonte shell clasps on the rear pleat detail and for the side closure which were purchased from Josy Rose Haberdashery, they are beautiful and really work with the deep Bordeuax Red Velvet,

The fur trim used were purchased scarf's and though not ideal I had great difficulty sourcing the right colour fur trim and these worked really well for colour match.

I am so happy how the overall design worked and very proud of the finished garment.

Creations like this are what makes all the hard work worth while :-

Atonement Green Silk Dress Inspired Pattern

Original Green Silk Dress

Jacqueline Durran Sketch

Here are my dress creations (pictured below) that were inspired by Keira Knightley's Green Silk Skirt & Top (pictured above) that she wore for the film Atonement. 

Suzannah's Dress

Lyndsey's Dress

I intend to take the pattern pieces for both versions of the dress that I have created inspired by the Green Silk Skirt & Top from the film Atonement and draft up different size pattern pieces for both creations so I can then re-create these dresses in a selection of sizes & styles. 

As I have further developed the dress I feel the pattern pieces and construction methods are now unique to each dress.

So even though, and this is the confusing bit :-), the 1st toile which I created on my original teal version of the dress, I used some of the pattern pieces from Vogue pattern 7365 to create the gore panel on the back and the bust/neckline. Once the 1st toile had been created it was then dissected to create the 2nd Toile, which in turn was altered and finally adjusted to construct the 3rd toile. 

It was from the 3rd toile I made actual pattern pieces to cut and construct the finished version of the silk dress in teal.

For the 2nd corset top version of the dress I used my own pattern pieces that I had created from the 1st dress and a basic corset top and re-sized them to developed this version of the dress, I created 2 toiles for this version before finally cutting the dress from the silk.