Dress Update #1

Thank you to everyone for the encouragement and votes of confidence on my last post. I ran everything by my sewing instructor, Shaerie, Tuesday night and she also thought it was totally doable. In fact, she even said she would be more than happy to help me fit the bodice muslin over the weekend. Awesome!! The rest of the week was filled with general life stuff, but Friday night I was finally able to get crackin' on everything.

I went out to Mood Fabrics after work on Friday with a short list of fabric types and colors that I was contemplating and strict instructions from Shaerie to find a nice gal working that night and to pick her brain. The person that helped me was great and it was actually one of her suggestions (that wasn't on my original list) that wound up being my final pick. So, here are the pretties - silk twill in a deep purple for the outside and an orchid china silk for the lining:

I also picked up a bit of white silk organza to interface the midriff sections (thanks Lindsey T for the tip!) and to use as a press cloth. The fabric was not cheap and I needed a grip of it, but the cost was drastically offset by the gift card a few of my co-workers had given me for my 30th birthday. A couple of them had been bugging me about when I was going to use it and they were very happy to hear it was funding this project.

Later that night, I started working on the muslin for the bodice. It was late, I was tired, but I still wanted to at least get a first stab at it.

Um, that's not good. Like, at all.

This lead to muslin #2. Better, but still not great.

On to muslin #3. Hey, that actually is starting to look like a dress!

Muslin #3 is what I brought to Shaerie this afternoon. You have no idea how much I was grinning when she looked at it, pinned it on me and then pronounced that I had done "a really great job." :D She pinned in a new waistline and adjusted the center back to fit my actual back, but otherwise no changes were needed. She suggested a little ease stitching around the armholes to prevent gaping, but otherwise, it's pretty much good to go. I'm still sort of in shock and ridiculously excited that I was able to mostly fix the fit problems by myself. The midriff pieces had to undergo some considerable changes to from the original pattern pieces (the ones on top in the pictures), but somehow it all worked out.

Having Shaerie there to confirm that things looked good and to tweak a few things is so helpful. I go back on Thursday to have her help with the hemming - of course, this will mean that I actually need to have a completed dress by then. Eeeek!

Tomorrow the goal is to add the changes to the bodice pattern pieces and to redraft the skirt pattern from the full short skirt, to a floor-length a-line style. And hopefully I'll get all of the fabric cut out as well. But, for now, it's time for bed!