Draping a Knit Dress with a Twist

For my final project in Draping IV at FIT, due this coming Saturday, I have to design both a dress and a jacket.

Our professor didn't put any further restrictions on us, which made the assignment harder: we could make almost anything in any fabric. Since we'd worked with knits quite a bit this semester, I decided to make a knit dress, not something I have much experience with as most of the knit projects I've undertaken have yielded meh results. I wanted to try a dress with a twist, inspired by the image above, from Helen Joseph-Armstrong's popular book, Draping For Apparel Design.

I had found a colorful knit jersey print recently in the remainder bin at Fabrics For Less recently, just 99 cents a yard. There was more than enough of it to make a dress.

First I tried the twist in muslin. I liked the result!

Then I tried it with my knit. I suppose a solid would have showcased the twist a bit more, but I love the colors in this fabric -- something of a 1940's palette, imo.

I draped a flared skirt to go with the top and connected them with a waistband, which is lined in gray cotton jersey for extra strength.

Back neck and armholes are piped.

I really like the dress, even though it's simple and -- let's face it -- something I copied out of a textbook. Sometimes you feel inspired and sometimes you don't.

For my jacket, I wanted to drape from scratch and, for the first time, used the Size 6 half-scale dress form I picked up second-hand last year. I draped with a gray cotton jersey remnant. The jacket is similar to a shrug.

My final jacket will be a bit different, but I had great fun draping on the half-scale form and I used very little fabric in the process.

And that's it! I'll show you the finished garments together after Saturday's final class.

Anybody drape using a half-scale form?

Have a great day, everybody!