[BeSewStylish: Basic Training to Unleash Your Creativity]
Show and Tell: Flamenco Dress
comments (2) June 10th, 2008
Ann Steeves, contributor
10 users recommend
Classic on the top, this dress cuts loose at the hemline. It was created using a pattern by Folkwear.
Photo: Ann Steeves
I have long admired this Folkwear pattern (Folkwear 140), a classic flamenco style dress in several lengths. For a number of years, I kept my eye on it and looked for an opportunity to make it. Finally, that opportunity presented itself in 2005. My husband and I went to a black-tie gala for the Breast Care Center at our local hospital. I decided that would be the perfect opportunity to finally make (and wear) the Flamenco Dress.
Two dresses in one
The pattern for the dress has two distinct personalities. The upper dress is a standard princess-line dress. It’s a simple-to-construct dress that offers great fitting and design opportunities. The very simplicity of it gives myriad chances for embellishment. I could easily see this as a wedding dress, with strategically placed lace and beading. It has ruffled sleeves that echo the other half of the dress.
The second personality is the fiery flamenco skirt. The pattern has several options for skirt lengths, from a single-tier mini to a 4-tier gown. The ruffled tiers were great fun to work with, because they are made with circular ruffles. In all, I cut 36 circles in various sizes to make the skirt of this gown. That’s a lot of ruffles! But those ruffles take the garment from merely lovely to breathtaking. The circular ruffles have a movement and drape that are just beautiful. The dress almost seems to dance by itself.
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The ruffled flamenco skirt can be made in different lengths. |
Construction notes
Enough poetic waxing; let’s talk about construction! I knew from the start that I wanted to make this from silk. Because of the circular ruffles, the pattern requires a lot of fabric (between 11 and 14 yards, depending on the width). I was working on a relatively short time frame. I had two weeks, so I went to a local fabric store to see what they had for fabrics. In the home dec department, I found a lovely dupioni that was royal blue in the warp and silvery-white in the weft. The end result is a pale silver-blue iridescent effect.
As I say, this dress has two distinct personalities, with underlying differences in construction. The princess line dress is as simple and as standard as they come. Because I was working with duppioni, I opted to underline the entire upper dress with silk organza. I used an invisible zipper, and I finished all inside seams by whipstitching the seam allowances to the organza underlining with silk thread.
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Underlining the upper dress with silk organza helps to strengthen the seams and reduced wrinkling. |
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Comments (2)
Posted: 12:24 pm on June 26th
Posted: 1:23 pm on May 2nd