Attempt I

I went to the fabric store yesterday with my sister to look at fabric and hopefully find a pattern to work with but I came out empty handed. I'm going to do a bit more research online so hopefully I won't feel like I'm so over my head. I've attained a sewing machine so I don't have to attempt this by hand (thank goodness!).

Possibilities

I still have to look for the fabric that I'll be using to sew the base of the dress. I'm not sure if I should go with a solid black, white, beige, or grey... or if I should go for a patterned fabric. I don't want it to be too busy because I want most of the focus to be on the bottom half where the pages are going to be. I have a sketch below of what I'm seeing everything will look like in the end.

Pages will be printed out to full page on 8 1/2 x 11 paper. I will be using a mixture of paper from glossy to standard printing paper.

I also had a question... would it be cheating if I found a ready made dress to sew everything on in case my attempts at making one from scratch doesn't pan out?

Questions Answered - Pictures

I wanted to answer a few questions on the sketch first:

"The dress sketch is really nice! I think it will work out very well. I would really like to see the skirt part of the dress be made out of paper instead of fabric. I think it would add some great texture to the dress. I am really glad that you are adding in pictures of your mom in the dresses. This really looks like it is becoming a great experience for you.

Danielle"

That is exactly what I had in mind!

"The images you have posted convey a "quilt" theme; something old, something new. I would use pictures of your mom to adhere the new pictures to the old. Will you be adding any narration?

Elaine"

I probably won't be adding any narration. I would really like the images to speak for themselves.

Once again this is a great idea! Please add photos of your mom in the dress in the book as well as the other photos. The photo of the dress
you took is very strong and the lighting is very soft. Keep it up!! -sky

Thanks sky. I was definitely thinking about it.

Scratch

I've drawn up a sketch of what I'd like my "dress" book to look like. I'm sure things will change as time goes by and I start to really work on trying to sew it together but here it is.

I've also found some pictures of my mom in two of her dresses. I want to dig for more and I hope I find some. Here is the picture of the blue and purple dress:

And this is the dark brown dress:

In Progress

Two Hands