Floral Embroidery Dress

This is my first completed project of 2017! Embroidery dress. I started on this in late November and it took me (according to my work hour log) about 70 hours. I went through two seasons of the BBC show, Poldark while stitching this together.

I made this dress for a customer and she will use it some kind of performance. She plays some kind of musical instrument. The inspiration comes from this Lilly Brown embroidery dress. I was intimidated at first by the number of embroidery pieces that would be required to complete the dress, but I decided to give it a try.

The dress is made of satin and chiffon. Since it would be difficult to embroider directly on chiffon without causing the fabric to pucker, I embroidered the flowers on satin, cut around the embroidery and applique on chiffon. It might have been possible to embroider directly on chiffon if I use the embroidery machine, but I did not have an access to it this time nor the time to play around with it. Has anyone have experience with embroidery sewing machine?
{Flower pieces embroidered on satin, before being attached to chiffon}{Making sure the back is as pretty as possible}{Boned lining before being attached to the dress. I use white washi tapes to cover the ends of the bones, tip I learned in Tatiana Kozorovitsky’s class.}{Dress in works before the lining is attached.}{Elasticized panel on the right}

The dress has boning in the bodice and padded at bust area. The back has an elasticized panel with invisible zipper inside the lace-up panel so a bit of adjustment is allowed. The customer is smaller than my dress form but because of the elastic back and lace up, the dress still fit the dress form. I waited to hem the chiffon skirt until the very end. I knew with the weight of the embroidery, some parts will be weighted down. I put the dress form on chair and mark the new hem line with erasable marker. Then I cut the chiffon hem and finished it with rolled hem.

Overall, it was a great experience making this dress.