You certainly know that feeling: When scrolling through other people’s instagram, their dresses just seem perfect. The fitting is ideal and their body looks enchanting, while your own dress is full of errors. But Of course, you should always try to improve your sewing skills and try new projects. But sometimes, it can be really frustrating to see all the mistakes you did when creating a dress. You are not alone!
In the following post, I would like to show you some of my typical errors. While it was pretty frustrating during the making-of process, a lot of them make me smile from today’s point of view and really improved my sewing. Have fun and don’t hesitate to comment.
You should also have a look at the making-of section and the pages featuring reworked projects.
You may not be able to spot the mistake on this photo, but my very first dress has two different shoulder pieces: one is longer than the other.
A corset is a very important foundation layer, because it prevents the upper layers from having those wrinkles.
But since corsets are a rather difficult project, it took several attempts at making a good one. Some had really disturbing shapes.
My early skirts were way too long, which meant a waste of material.
In contrast to this, I had way to little fabric for this dress, resulting in too short sleeves. Later I added in some contrasting fabric, so that it turned into a ratherf fashionable dress.
After sewing in an asymmetrical piece of the skirt the wrong way, I had some material shortage on one of the seams. Since I could not change this later, I had to sew in a small piece. This is hidden under a frill.
While working on my Ciri cosplay, I cut out the same piece twice.
Sometimes you cannot prevent that your costumes or cosplays get some amount of damage during conventions, so that you have to invest a lot of time into repairing it after a con.
The shoes did not even survive the first photoshooting, but I guess that was partly my fault, because the acrylic paint did not stay on the green shoe, that had kind of a velvet fabric. But I did not expect the sole to fall off.
My 1850s Velvet Dress was not a planned project. But when the fabric looked rather dull on itself, I cut the skirt (which should originally become a bustle) into pieces and layered it with some lace.
The sleeves on my Victoria dress turned out to be a little bit too short, which made my arms look very wide in some of the photos. You may not see it on this one. I added some leftover fabric. In fact, similar looking sleeves can be found on original garments, too.
I am pretty sure that this page will grow soon! Some mistakes are just inevitable and others just happen randomly.
You can find your way back to the other topics here.