A very time-consuming dress from Moschino

I'm working on this dress from the Moschino Cheap and Chic collection at the moment. I think it's really pretty! It has a heart-shaped petal trim, which is taking me FOREVER to sew. The dress itself only took me a few hours to make, but the petals are so time-consuming!

 

from net-a-porter.com

from style.com

These two images are the exact same dress, just from different websites. And it's confusing, because the colour looks completely different!! On the runway it's more of a hot pink, and from net-a-porter it's more of a soft baby pink. So when I was buying fabric I just went with the closest I could find to any of them, which turned out to be a sort of in-between colour.

These are my progress shots. I'm only working on the front of the dress at the moment (In the original, the petal trim goes the whole way round the dress) because I have a feeling that I'm only going to sew the trim on the front. 

 

The whole process of doing this trim is quite easy, it's just very time consuming. I've made 3 heart templates, a big heart, a medium size heart, and a small heart. I cut the hearts out one by one (at first I was layering the fabric and cutting multiple hearts out at once, but because the fabric is very slippery a lot of the hearts were getting cut crooked, so one at a time it is!). 

Then I hold the heart up to a lit candle, and very carefully singe the edges to make sure it doesn't fray. In the original the hearts haven't been singed - I think they used a fabric that didn't fray. This was the best fabric I could get a hold of - in terms of weight and colour - and unfortunately it does fray. Singeing the edges of the fabric also meant that the hearts aren't a perfect shape anymore, and they don't have that light look that the original does. Oh well, it was a bit of a trade-off.

Once I've singed the edges, I pin the heart to the dress (just like in the photo above) and I hand stitch straight down the middle. I pin it to make sure that the hearts are all nicely lined up and in a row.

I've spent about 30 hours on the dress so far, and I've still got so much more to do!