Queen Manuela - An Epic story about a creation of a Prom Queen's Dress!

My absolutely wonderful and beautiful niece did become Prom Queen!!! Huzzah for Queen Manuela!!!!

It has become tradition that I design and sew the Sr. prom dresses for my nieces. For Manuela, we started this project a year ago. Manuela sent me about 50 or so different images that she liked. (I won't bore you with the details.) What it boiled down to was that she wanted something vintage with modern flair. So after reviewing her images, I started with this sketch:

During the design process, Manuela decided to have the waist dropped to her lower hip-line and she wanted to add a belt. Based on these updates, I proceeded to draft the pattern, cut/sew the muslin. She came up to my house on 2 consecutive weekends for her fittings. Here are some images from the two fittings. During the fittings, Manu decided she did not want sleeves.

I then proceeded to cut the dress out and start to put it together.

We only had one day to do the final fitting. During the fitting we decided to remove the top two layers of the skirt as they were weighing down the netting and crinoline (Yes...we ended up with crinoline under all of this...created from a bridal slip and attached at the seam-line.)

Here she is on Prom Night!

 Plus, the prom had masquerade theme so I made a mask using an embroidery pattern from UrbanThreads.

Here is the happy couple!

This was really a fun project and was happy to co-design this dress with Manuela! And I know she was very happy with it.

And a shout out to my sister Amie who helped with some of the finishing during Manu's final fitting. 

Now onto the next project...Reorganizing my studio and fabric/trim storage!

Love Long and Prosper, Teri