From Russia With Love

This was the title of my first project that I had to under take at Uni, our brief being that we had to make  a traditional Russian Dress, namely a Sarafan. I suppose you could say, it is what we would call a pinafore.

Here is a picture of my model Alison, wearing my finished Sarafan and blouse.

The main body of the dress was made in a heavy red drill fabric. I constructed the dress in three parts, two individual front panels and one back panel cut out on the fold. I then inserted four godets into the dress to give it more volume. Two being in the back panel and one in each front section.

I bought some jacquard flock fabric off eBay to make the gold panels down the front, around the hem and over the straps. I then sourced some check ribbon to run down either side of my gold panels and finished the hem and arm holes with gold bias binding.

For the buttons, I wanted to sew these on in a more traditional manor, which involves threading all the buttons onto the string/ribbon and placing them out evenly. With the other side of the string/ribbon make loops and stitch in place opposite the buttons.

I had to make the loop's tighter than shown, as the buttons were only small and kept popping open.

I made the blouse, wide fitting with a raglan sleeve, in a white linen fabric. I added a red linen collar, shoulders and cuffs, tied up by a button.

Here's Ali again modelling it!

I was really pleased with the finally outcome and passed the module.