Week 2: Setup/Sketch

Ooh, now we’re into the real challenges.  The thing this week was to make a party dress from a burlap potato sack.  Thanks to previews I am well-armed with burlap, my cheapskate nature let me only get two yards of the 48″ wide fabric, which was totes an overestimate as it looks like potato sacks run twenty-odd by forty-odd inches.  Ah well, the stuff is mad useful. As of my hand-drafting this entry this morning, I didn’t know if contestants got to use lining, but it looked like they were free to use dyes and trim.

Party dresses are not my forté, so this will be interesting.  Dresses like that have got to be flattering and “flirty”. Bleh.  With this kind of theme one has to either totally transform the fabric or be super frank—where the ‘wow’ factor is how the amazing dress was made from something so unconventional.

Here’s the sketches, done in half and hour on the train to work:

I’m trying to keep in mind the classic party dress trick of nipping in at the waist and flaring right at, or just below, the hip.  I’m totally pro cowls and burlap does drape pretty fab.  It’s part of the radness of the material, folding up small and conforming to weird shapes (ha, like the human form).

However, I can easily see it looking sloppy, so I’m entertaining ideas of structure.  We’ll see how it works out.

Now on to drafting!