Toile Dress Fitting for Princess Silhouette

This was my first toile fitting for Princess Silhouette's dress. I did this fitting right after the underwear photoshoot since Camilla (my model) was already in her underwear. I think this made sense but wasn't the best time; I felt very aware that she was tired and hungry and had given her whole morning to the photoshoot. She was absolutely lovely and patient which I greatly appreciated. I also had a time mix up with my tutor so I ended up doing the fitting by myself. Although I probably could have used the help; this might have been a good step in me learning to do a fitting on my own. I used my best judgement looking at my research and original design and since I will be having a second fitting in top fabric I think trying this on my own was a good learning experience. From what I could tell there weren't too many changes to be made. It was obvious that the front needed a bit of tweaking. The neck-line was a little too low, just like on the other dress and I changed that design line now to include all the seam allowance. And I made a little dart just to stop it from gaping. It also didn't line up in the front so that had to be accounted for. On the back (which I foolishly didn't take a picture of) was taken a little just to make it fit really well. The arm-hole was okay on this bodice but I still made it just a little bigger to account for some ease she might need in moving. And then the sleeve, just like on Princess Colour, needed taking up. I did something a little different on this one and changed the leave to include a kind of three draw-string effect based on one drawing of this dress in my book. However I didn't actually like this as much on the model and I eliminated one whole draw-string but left one extra draw-string close to the bottom.

Evaluation:
I think this was a positive fitting over-all. The emphasis on time was both good and bad in ways. I needed the experience of working on my own and also to work quickly. In the industry I might not be able to have a whole afternoon with an actor and will have to get a lot of information in a short amount of time. On the other-hand using the tutors insight and knowledge is invaluable as the deadline for this project gets closer and closer. What this time constraint taught me is that: take lots of photographs. Really that should go without saying but especially when you don't have a lot of time with a model or actor, photographs can be a key to making a successful fitting. Luckily I don't feel like I had too much to alter on my toile and the information that I did get was very useful. I'll be interested to see how the second fitting goes after I make these alterations to my pattern and start in top fabric.