Week 1: Introduction

Hey! Welcome to my senior project blog. In this post, I'll briefly outline what I've chosen for my capstone project and set some goals for the upcoming weeks. 

Long story short, I'm planning to sew a formal graduation dress. I planned this senior project under the assumption that we were still learning entirely remotely, but luckily, that's changed — now, I don't have to sew at home, alone, by myself, with occasional breaks for zoom meetings with my mentor Mia Bane. Instead, I'll be sewing at home, alone, by myself, with occasional breaks for zoom meetings with Mia. Oops. 

I've also taken on a short-term machining job which takes up 12 hours Monday-Wednesday, so most of my progress will be happening on Thursdays/Fridays/The Weekends. 

Ultimately, I hope to end up with a nice pretty dress that I get to wear as I walk across the stage in about a month. My dream dress is this one: 

Unfortunately, it takes more than a little wishful thinking to end up with a final product like that, so I've set myself some goals and milestones to hit along the way. 

• Find a suitable pattern with those cool sleeves and the organza (transparent gauzy material) overlay
• Make a mockup out of muslin (a fabric used to draft garments because it's cheap)
• Spend way too much money on actual fabrics and sew the final piece 
• Document my work each step of the way

And the hardest one:

•  Actually follow the pattern that I chose instead of improvising whenever I get confused

Now, I've done a significant amount of sewing before. In fact, over the past few months I've kinda sorta started a kinda sorta business sewing these minimalistic plush robots (aka Dozers):

(side note, if you want to order a custom one you should email me at shop@dozershop.shop)

So far this week, I’ve mostly just looked at patterns and struggled through buying the right ones. I picked a pattern that I ordered a digital copy of, realized that I need a physical copy, and tried to find one, but they didn’t have one in my size, so instead I bought a bunch of other patterns (on sale) that I’m totally going to make even though they aren’t actually related to my project. It was quite an adventure. If I ever figure out the formal dress thing, I’ll have to revisit my plans, but for now I’m just going to sew fun things. 

Over the weekend, I plan to start making this sundress (A):

 

I’ll keep you updated on how it goes!