mala_14 | Entries tagged with bridesmaid dress

Things I made in 2014 (some still need a bit of finishing, but are mostly done), with comments:
1. Smooth Sailing grey wool trousers: need hemming, nice wardrobe staple, will be good for when I have to look professional or something like a grown-up ;p

2. 1790s plum silk stays: technically need tape over the seams, but wearable as is, SO GLAD to finally have these done!

3. 1790s cotton-linen shift: practical and useful

( More behind the cut! )
I did a terrible job on my 2014 goals, but don't care at all. I ended up wanting to sew different things. It happens. :p

On average I managed to sew one thing per month. Not bad for me. I also tried out a lot of new techniques and made a wide variety of garments. 2015 will mostly be CoCo sewing: lots of 1880s stuff and possibly a couple of other eras thrown in, plus many more accessories! :)

Just to liven up the ol' LJ, here are some pictures so it's not all text all the time. This is the bodice in progress with the fashion fabric finally (partially) attached.
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And a detail shot of the fabric so you can see the fuzzy grey pattern that I want to paint gold.
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Also, here's a picture of the hand-picked zipper I did on the bridesmaid dress. I realized I never posted a pic of this and I'm pretty proud of it. It was probably one of the easiest zipper insertions I've ever done, although it might have been a bit more time-consuming. But you can't argue with the results. The waist seam and the top of the zipper are all lined up and matched. :)
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So maybe the hem wouldn't pass close inspection, but it looks perfectly fine from about 2 feet away and I'm done with this. Sewing the hem yesterday evening when I was all tired out with a headache might not have been my most brilliant idea, but now it's out of the way and I can think about other things. If I ever want to wear the dress again I can always cut off the little hem and put in a bigger and better hem. (Probably using bias tape as per

starlightmasque's suggestion.)

I hope to have a working pattern for my Tyrell bodice done this week so I can start construction next week. I hope that this one goes fairly quickly. The project shortlist for the next two months includes: Tyrell bodice, finishing Regency stays, a striped Regency pelisse (which may get pushed back a bit, depending on how long the stays take me), the rest of the Tyrell costume (skirt and shoulder pieces), and my boyfriend's Halloween costume.

The longlist somehow keeps getting longer... Some thoughts that I am throwing around include natural form undies (corset, chemise, and petticoats), cotton print bustle dress, striped natural form polonaise, 1882 ballgown, Edwardian petticoat, 1908 dress, 1790s riding habit (shirt, waistcoat, skirt, and jacket). I am well aware that I will not get to all of these things, but I do have fabric that could make lots of them. I just also happen to need more fabric as well as notions to complete them.

I left my dress on the dressform and taped an erasable/disappearing fabric marker to a door frame and used that to mark my hem. It was actually fairly accurate for the most part. Then I marked it all again with pins while sitting on the floor to make sure it was even all the way around. That's it so far. I'm going to take the rolled hem foot to it, but I'm feeling all headache-y at the moment so I think it will have to wait for this evening.

I have a wedding rehearsal dinner to attend in about an hour and just need a break before heading into the chaos that is preparing for weddings. I've been kind of stressed lately and I think it's making my neck and shoulder muscles all tense and causing me to have trouble sleeping so I've had a lot of headaches in the past couple of days. On the plus side I have a massage therapy appointment on Wednesday, and that should help. The first wedding is this Saturday. It'll be good to have that one out of the way. I'm looking forward to having my regular life back where I can just concentrate on school and my little hobbies like reading and sewing!

I finished off the bias facing and all that's left is the hem! The dress is now on the dressform so the skirt can hang and do its wonky bias thing. I'll hem it on Monday. Now I can get started on my GoT Tyrell bodice!

A refresher picture of what I'm aiming for:
MargaeryCersei

More thoughts on this tomorrow. :)

This is me figuring out the length of the straps. I'm also testing out these shoes with the dress. Pretend that the facing the is poking out the back is already understitched and tacked down by hand. And ditto on the part where the facing is pinned at CF. And that my expression looks significantly less angry. (I was focused on trying to get a good shot of the dress and the shoes.) ;p

I'd also say pretend there aren't any wrinkles in the back, but I think some of those are there to stay because I am just too darn lazy to add boning to get rid of them.

All that's left now is: sewing in the front of the straps, understitching the facing, tacking down the facing (probably by whipstitching to the lining, and hemming.

I'm sitting here in my bridesmaid dress. I got the skirt attached and the zipper put in. In the interest of learning new skills on projects this year, I put in a hand-picked zipper. It turned out really nice and was so much easier than machine sewing. This meant that I was able to try on the darned thing and it fits! I can zip it up and there's no weird gaping or anything. It would be much improved with some boning on the side seams to get rid of a few small wrinkles, but there's no way I'm going to put in that sort of effort. I'm hoping that once I get the straps in the wrinkles should disappear for the most part. The only problem is that when I was using the seam ripper to rip out the basting stitches in the CB, I accidentally ripped out a couple of stitches of the CB seam, so I have to go back and slip-stitch that little bit at the bottom of the zipper closed.

I have to say, I'm liking this dress better now that the skirt is attached (and I know that it fits fine). The skirt is twirly and fun and it balances out the bodice. Also, using tried-and-true patterns is the best! So much easier than starting from scratch. I'm hoping I can get the straps sewn and attached with the bias facing tomorrow. Then I'll have pictures!

I was kind of busy today so I didn't work on my bridesmaid dress this morning (although I probably could have if I wasn't so lazy) and figured I could work on it this evening after I got back from softball (which we actually won! Our team has 3 wins total now for the entire season. We're not very good...). However, I got a headache during the ball game and it hasn't gone away so I don't feel like working on the dress and am leaving it to tomorrow. So far the bodice front is attached to the backs. Tomorrow I will attach the skirt, add a waist tape, and do the zipper. That should make it try-on-able. Then I can make any fitting adjustments it needs. And then the next day I work on it will be straps and bias facing the neckline. Then hemming and handsewing down the facing.

I am feeling so unmotivated on this dress. I didn't even use a tape to stabilize the sweetheart neckline even though I did all the research to figure out how to do it. I just staystitched it instead. I think the taupe-y grey colour is just not very inspiring for me and I'd rather be working on other fun things for me. But I was just too darn cheap to buy another bridesmaid dress this year. Oh well. It'll be done next Monday. I'm determined!

Not much progress. :p I should have picked a simpler design, maybe. I shortened the length of the overlay on the side seams to streamline them a bit. Then I hand-gathered the side of the overlay, re-pinned to the lining, and hand basted the two together. It's now ready to be trimmed and sewn. I should probably do that now. I was hoping to have way more done today, like the bodice completely together and attached to the skirt. Doesn't look like that's going to happen. Still thinking I'll get it finished this weekend, except maybe hemming. (The skirt is a half circle and will need to hang for a while before hemming.) Totally going to machine hem this sucker!

I just want to get started on my GoT Tyrell bodice!

So, I figured out the gathered overlay CF. I gathered and pinned the two overlay pieces CF and then put them right sides together on top of the lining piece. Then, when I sewed down the CF, it had all three layers in the seam. Flip the one piece of overlay over so that it's against the lining and voila! the gathered pieces are sewn to each other and to the lining all matched up and stable.

And then I pinned the thing to the dressform and started pinning the gathered side seams. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. What do you think?

Also, pinning on the dressform made me feel like a couturiere which was fun!

I cut out the bridesmaid dress last night, even though I totally wanted to continue procrastinating on it. And I started sewing today. So far, I have all the darts sewn into the bodice (one in each back piece and four altogether in the front lining). I started gathering the front overlay. After I had all the gathering threads in and pulled it up to the same length as the CF lining, I sewed the two gathered layers together then removed the now-unnecessary gathering threads. When I went to pin it to the CF lining, it was some how 2 inches too big! Silly bodice. So I had to rip out all the threads and put in new gathering threads. Whew! I'm taking a break now. I think this may actually not take that long to put together. Famous last words, right?

I cut out all the squares and the binding for the baby quilt. (And only cut myself once with the rotary cutter and that was just because I gently brushed the back of one of my fingers against the blade by accident, so not serious at all.) I loved using my new-ish (from Christmas) quilting ruler. It made things so much easier. The backing will be the same yellow-y space aliens fabric as the binding. An unintentional theme of these fabrics seems to be things related to the sky (flight, space, stars). I was more trying to be somewhat gender neutral.

I also got my pattern sorted (I hope!). Here are the back/back lining, front lining, and front. I'm not entirely sure about the shape of the front which will be gathered over the lining at CF and sides. Trying to guess at how much it will shrink when gathered and taking the darts into account was tricky. I may need a mock-up for this.

I'm being a bit nuts and trying to sew up a baby quilt for my friend's baby shower on the 10th. I washed all the fabrics and have just finished cutting out all the squares. It's going to be very simple, just 8 squares by 8 squares, with them lined up in rainbow order. (I couldn't find an order that would look better.) I think I can get the quilt top at least mostly assembled tomorrow and then finish assembly and quilt the layers on Friday. Binding will have to wait until later next week because I'm going to be off to a friend's cabin for the long weekend.

I've switched gears again and come up with a different design for my bridesmaid dress. I'm copying McCall 7667, but I'll make it with a half circle skirt ending below the knee. I have a tried and true simple bodice pattern that I am going to fiddle with this evening. Mostly I just need to change the neckline and draft an extra front piece that will have all the shirring.

I'm a bit worried about having gaping at the front neckline because the sweetheart line means that it'll be all bias-y and possibly stretch out. I wonder what I can do to prevent that.