Day 5 and a bit of the weekend..

Friday felt much more productive than earlier days, it resulted in something resembling a dress!

Firstly, I struggled to find room to check the size of the front pieces! This picture is taken from out of the door!

The front and the drape was attached to the back on the left side and then the drape was pinned across in the correct place to hang correctly.


I worked out the placement of the lace for the front.

Luckily this was much easier than the train. Because only a small part of it is on show, it didn't need to be placed around a curve, a triangle was okay.

This was then sewn in place. Finally all the dress pieces are sewn together!

Unfortunately I noticed a couple of problems..
Not sure how much it notices in this picture, but at the side seams, the back of the skirt is bulging out and overhanging the front. It seems really obvious to me so it's going to bug me if I don't sort it. I think the problem is that the front of the dress isn't being pushed out enough. The tulle I used for the petticoat was much softer than I realised (it was really cheap, so worth a try!). Once I was working with it, I had a feeling it wasn't going to really do it's job properly. It's also supposed to stop the hoop showing when moving around in the dress but it doesn't. I'm going to have to replace it with some stiffer dress net. Hopefully this will help with the sides of the skirt, otherwise I might need to take some fabric out the back.

I had a day off Saturday as we went out, but today I've done a little more.

The band has been added to the top of the bodice and I started experimenting with how I'm going to place the lace around the waist.



I think I'll be going with the last one, it's only slightly different from the second, it's just bunched up a little closer. The bow in the middle was just me playing to get an idea of what it'll look like, but I kinda like the long ends hanging down, might have to experiment further with that!

A couple more full length pics


Back to work tomorrow, so it'll be back to only doing a tiny amount each evening :o( At least I did manage to get a lot done this week, it is almost there (ish) :o)

Days 3 and 4

What have I been doing the last couple of days... in some ways it feels like not much!

Firstly I joined the back 4 pieces together and the front 3 pieces, including the dreaded curved princess seams You have to cut notches in one of the pieces of fabric and pull it into the curved shape
They turned out okay, but I didn't take a picture. I didn't sew the side seams as there's the drape to do first.

After this I started on sorting the lace for the train.

Here it is firstly laid out, making the edge go around the curve.

You can see there's a lot of excess lace over the rest because of this curve. So I had to work out where I could cut some darts into the lace to mean it lies flat, but still looks like it is all following the shape of the train

The scary part was removing the edge and then cutting these darts out as this lace was very expensive - I only bought *just* enough. If I cut did it wrong, I'd not have enough to fix it! However, it seems to have turned out okay.

Then I needed to sew it all on. Unfortunately I thought sorting this lace train would take about half a day. Turned out it took one and a half days :o(

Hopefully it's worth it though (the back of the dress is only pinned onto Grisleda, there's no front of the dress!)

Day 2

Today I have mostly been looking at...
I've attached the organza underlining to the satin by sewing around the edge of each piece. It's very slow, but oddly relaxing. It's just a shame there's not been any real visible progress (though this wasn't helped by falling asleep on the sofa after dinner!). I also did a bit of pressing to get some creases out, exciting eh!

Pile'o'underlined dress pieces

'Holiday' day 1

A very exciting round up of what I did yesterday...

Tried on the muslin over the top of the final base layers to check it's fit. To check the length I got to fish the shoes I bought a year ago out of the attic. I'd forgotten what they were like, they're pretty :o)

It fitted fine, so no adjustments there, yay! Just needed to add a bit to the length.

I modified Griselda to be more my shape, and layered up the corset and lining so I could then go a little work on the muslin with it on the dressform.

I then modified the train to work out where it needs cutting to include the lace piece

Once that was done, I had to take it all apart! Final sewing lines after all the adjustments coloured red, ironed flat and then the seam allowances trimmed

Then in the evening I spent three hours in the textiles room at Mike's work cutting out the satin and organza underlining. Took ages, but so much easier to do on a table that's 1.5m x 2m! Today I have the fun task of hand tacking all the satin and organza layers together.. one day I'll get to actually sewing something that will be seen ;o)

Ruffles!

I learnt something today, soft tulle is not very nice stuff to work with! It's hard to lay out, hard to cut out, hard to sew, hard to gather... ugh! However, I have managed to end up with the two layers of netting the pattern called for.

Layer 1 pinned in place:

Both layers sewn on:

That's it for today!

Cleaning and lining...

The majority of today was spent cleaning the room I'll be making the dress in. How exciting... It's a store/utility type room on the back of the garage that we're in the very slow process of getting ready to be knocked through into the living room to make a dining room. We've had a radiator and patio doors fitted, but that building work, in combination with it being a through route from garage to garden with the lawnmower has meant it was very dirty and dusty, certainly not white fabric friendly!

However, after that was finished I was able to get on with the lining. So far the lining pieces are together and I've added the channel for the hoop. Tomorrow I'll be working on the netting ruffles that are attached to the top of this.


My home for the next week:

And something completely unrelated. Our kitties are pleased we've been having the heating on recently, they were both squeezed in their radiator bed, aww :o)

Bit boring today really, and no pictures, though I might add some later. Last night I finished off the bottom edge of the inner corset by sewing the bias binding. It's the first time I've used it but it was surprising easy to get it looking neat on a curve (being cut on the bias of the fabric you can distort it slightly to 'bend' around curves, simple yet clever eh).

Then onto the next layer. I took the lining out of the muslin and then tried this on over the top of the corset. It still fits fine and doesn't need any adjusting, slightly surprising since I had to make the corset smaller, but then the dress itself isn't quite as close-fitting, it skims over the top of the foundation. This has now been unpicked ready to use as the pattern for the real lining fabric.

Unfortunately when trying on the muslin lining, I noticed something annoying. The top section of the princess seams on the corset aren't smooth. I didn't really notice before, but the bumps where showing on the lining, which means they'll probably show through the top dress layer too. I'd adjusted these seams a bit to get a tighter fit, but I think I've gone slightly too far. Since spotting it, this has been really bugging me, so I think I'm going to take them apart at the top and re-do :o( Luckily it's at the top edge which is still open, so I should be able to do it without having to take out the lining or my neat binding along the bottom!

On a positive note, I temporarily put some hoop steel on my muslin lining and it works much better than thick electrical cable ;o) Okay, that's not surprising really!

Tonight I might faff with the corset, or I might take a little break from that and cut out and sew the lining. Then I get to move onto yet another new thing, dress net and lots of gathering...