First attempt at draping!

[breakinglight11]

Ages ago I bought something like five yards of a gorgeous striped dupioni silk off of eBay. It's lovely, in sophisticated shades of gold, red, and dark green, and has a stiff hand and a smooth texture. Today I pulled it out of the bottom of my fabric basket and messed around with pinning it to Adelaide, my dress form. I don't know much about draping, and it's one of those arts that seems simple but takes years of practice to really get, but it was kind of fun sculpting with the fabric and pinning it in interesting shapes.

I love the look of the strong, varicolor vertical lines. I just did a simple cowl neck here, and tried to draw in the waist a little bit, but now I want to try more things. I've always liked the look of elaborate pleating at the bodice, and that's definitely a sort of design that one would drape. Not sure how it would look with the stripes... but I'm excited to find out!

Comments

[lisefrac.livejournal.com]

Neat! I've never really played with draping, mostly because I don't have a dress dummy on which to experiment. (A sad lack in my sewing room, true. But I can't find one I like).

You might enjoy this--Kass of RH makes a Vionnet-style 1910s dress in 20 minutes by draping pre-hemmed handkerchiefs:
http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/blog/golden-age-of-travel-dream-birthday-wardrobe-planning-week-two.html

I think this would look great on you!