For part 10 of my series on my Totally Minnie winning look for the Her Universe Fashion Show 2023 I’ll be sharing how I did the shoulder pouf. If you want to start from the beginning of the construction journey, start with this post. This is a pretty short one and perhaps less exciting than some of the others, but a useful technique for the future.
This was supposed to be posted a week ago, but I mess up some settings when I posted it . . . so now you get it a week later. I’m trying to wrap up this series and only have a few more posts that are mostly written but need photos. Hoping to knock those out this week or next. Anyhow, on to the post . . .
The pouf was a combination of trial and error though I could recreate it if needed. I had an idea of the right shape that was need to get the look I wanted. And I knew I wanted it filled with netting to give it, well, “poof.”
The basic idea is that it’s a circle folded in half that’s gathered on the long, curved edge. I had plenty of organza (see the Fifty Shades of Red post) and plenty of netting (see the Mistakes I Made post) so I was able to test it out and if I screwed up, I’d have plenty to try again. But this was one of those parts that actually went together fairly easily.
I cut out the circles by layering the netting and organza, folding in half, and eye balling a half circle. It didn’t need to be perfect since it would be gathered. I did a running stitch on the long edge of the half circle and gathered until it was the length of the shoulder strap.
It was good, but it was almost too big. Yeah, I know, hard to believe on this dress, but it was almost as tall as my head which wasn’t quite what I was going for. So I played around with it for a bit, accidentally folded it in half, and saw that worked really well. It not only made it the right height, but also gave it more structure, physically and visually.
The shoulder strap itself was a double layer of grosgrain ribbon with elastic between so it had a little give. The elastic is why it looks like it’s twisting in the picture above. In hindsight I would have done it a bit longer with the same elastic, but this worked. It was attached to the dress with large snaps that were hand sewn on to both the dress and pouf and made sure to have a clean finish, hiding all knots.
Similarly, when I attached the grosgrain to the pouf, I made sure to have a very clean finish on it as well. I had no idea what the judges were going to look at and this was easy access for them so I need to be sure it was clean.
I carried it separately so that it wouldn’t get crushed and it worked great. No issues with it popping off or anything. Having it detachable made it much easier to get on and off. Here’s a close up shot of how it looked on:
Photo by Brian Sims
