Bella-Rose Gown --Draping Class Spring 2026
I've been taking a draping class at BYU-Idaho! It's been wonderful! I wanted to post about my epic experience making the gown above.
I padded up a dress form to look like my body and completed many draping assignments. These produced 'slopers', or basic flat patterns that can be manipulated into a variety of patterns.
The basis for this gown is my princess line sloper. I used the previously made bodice sloper and draped a skirt sloper using the same princess line markings already on my dress form. I took these, trued them up and then basted them to the bodice muslin pieces to create the full princess pieces.
I turned my attention to the whorls. I decided I wanted my whorls to be 3” wide. I drew a circle using the 3” wide measurement, then overlapped the points. I knew it needed to be pointed on each end to avoid seams in the middle. This is what I came up with. When unrolled the whorl looks like this.
I draped it onto my muslin pattern pinned to my dress form and decided I liked the length for both the princess line and also another space between the sleeve and the princess seam.
I turned my attention to the sleeve. After seeing a short tutorial on how to make rose sleeves, I adapted the idea to these sleeves. The trick is that the rose is a cone. The top of the cone is pressed down creating the folds that resemble rose petals. The tutorial I watched put the seam of the cone at the upper sleeve. I didn’t want that seam to be there so noticeably. So with some thought and planning, I put that seam on the lower half of the sleeve. Once done, I was able to create a muslin cone and attempt to fit it to my dress form at the armscye. This is the result.
Front and Back views
Note the pins below the whorl, creating the lower sleeve. I made the sleeve length as long as I wanted for design purposes. I didn’t want it to look like just a rose stuck on my arm—I wanted it to look like a sleeve made of a rose.
I removed this draped sleeve, balanced the pattern, made it up into a muslin and tried it on the dress form. This sleeve looks puffier than the original draped one, and I like that look. So I finalized that pattern piece.
I needed to work on splitting the side Princess panels to allow for a whorl to be stitched into the seam. I took both side pieces of my Princess bodice pieces and measured halfway at the shoulder. I marked this curve following the curve of the armscye and made a new pattern piece. I added seam allowances, then modified the front and back panels as well. They turned out like this:
I pinned the pieces to the dress form to check accuracy. I was finally ready to cut out!
I decided to start with the whorls. I knew that narrow roll hemming on the serger would be difficult if they were already cut out, so instead of cutting them out, I made a paper pattern and used white waxy tracing paper to outline the parts needing hemming. Then I serged them stitching directly on the traced lines in the circle to get them hemmed. I used wooly nylon in a serger set up for narrow rolled hem. I used the differential foot to stretch the fabric to get as good of coverage as possible.
I started next on the rose sleeves. I cut out two rose sleeves and two original draped sleeves so that I could stitch the rose petals to something. This undersleeve would serve also as a lining. I stitched the rose sleeve cone, then followed that seam to form the cuff. I stitched the sleeve lining to the hem at the lower edges, turned it right side out and prepared to begin forming the rose.
To make sure the rose was well-shaped, I measured the depth of the sleeve lining to determine the center point. This is where I pinned the cone top as I collapsed it down onto the lining. I laid it on a pressing tool to start forming the wrinkles and pinning them to the lining. Once I was satisfied with the look, I moved to the other sleeve. Once they matched pretty well, I hand stitched the pleats of the rose to the sleeve lining. I noticed that this fashion fabric draped much more freely than the muslin, so I needed to take smaller pleats to keep the rose from looking limp when held vertically.
Once done with the sleeves, I began to assemble the dress. I stitched the front and back shoulder seams together, then pinned the whorls to the side seams.
I offset the whorls by ¼” so that they would have a smaller seam allowance. I basted these on with ¼” seam allowances. I stitched the side front and side backs together at the shoulder seams. I pinned the whorls to this, centering the whorls at the shoulder seam. The tight part is in the front. I basted the whorls in place with a ¼” seam allowance. I stitched this together matching notches with a 5/8” seam allowance. I only stitched to the waist since I knew I needed to also insert whorls into the lower back skirt seams. I added the next whorl to the raw edges of this new seam opening. The whorl points reached to the side seams nicely. I basted them on at ¼” seam allowance, then stitched the next pieces in place. I inserted the zipper and I tried the dress on and it fit nicely. After speaking with Julann, I decided to add side ties. YAY! I took the time to insert side seam pockets and finished the skirt front. I serged the seams to finish them. So I moved on to the dress skirt section. I basted the whorls into the back leaving several inches below the hem. I took an additional whorl and manipulated it into a hanging rose and basted this into the princess seam. I did this to all three of the back seams, and serged to finish the seams. I made up the lining so I could wrap the seam at center back and insert the neckline. I completed that step, graded and wrapped the seam to stitch the neckline, which I then understitched. Abigail marked my hem so I could hem the dress. Hemmed it and stitched the underarm lining to the underarm. Hand stitched a hook and eye on. Added French tacks. Whew, done!
Here is the final dress! Loving it!
