Thursday, November 17, 2011

Bodice= 80% done

So the bodice is about 80% done (that's a random number I pulled out of the air, but approximately correct). The top part has been attached to the bodysuit as have the straps. Yay! I made straps using a thick (1") piece of elastic and a lycra casing and attached them to the bodysuit. It took me remarkably less time than I expected to attach the outer bodice to the bodysuit. I expected to have to rip everything out and do it all again once or twice, but I think (I'm hesitant to say for sure) I got it right on the first try! This must be a miracle. I did spend about 10 minutes just staring at it and flipping it around to make sure I was pinning it together right so that I would get a nice smooth top edge and not sew the wrong sides of the fabric together. Then I realized I had put the pins on the wrong side of the fabric and had to move each one to the other side. Then I realized I still had put the pins along the line that would be sewing (is it sad that I thought line of dance when typing that?) and had to go back and move them all 90ยบ. So after doing all that I used a zig zag stitch to secure the elastic down and attach the outside part to the top of the bodysuit. Here's the result:

I pinned the skirts to the bodysuit to give the full effect, but the bottom of the bodice and the skirts are not finished yet, so the wrinkles and lumps will get flattened out. Also the skirts are a little see-through so I'm going to have to make an underskirt lining that goes to my knees or so so that it doesn't look like I'm naked.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Bodice in progress

The story of this dress seems to be that I start another section and then decide to do it entirely differently than how I had originally planned. The funny thing is it's actually going back to closer to the original design. After thinking a lot about how I was going to make it so that I could actually put the bodice on, I decided to scrap my plan to use the satin chiffon for the bodice. Since the satin chiffon does not stretch like the lycra I would have to put in some kind of closure. Zippers are for losers, so I decided to use the extra lycra I had (I'm so glad I ordered twice as much as I expected to need!) This means I'm going to have 2 extra meters of satin chiffon (in addition to the 2 meters of georgette [Chrisanne's version of chiffon]) to use. So I'm entertaining ideas now for what to do with it. I had originally intended to make the floats out of the georgette, but now that I'm going to have all of this extra satin chiffon I might do some combination of the two. Floats are still a ways off though. So here's another work in progress picture:
The top and bottom edges of the bodice aren't done yet (and it clearly has no straps yet which it will soon) but the middle part is pretty much done, so I thought I'd give y'all an update.

Monday, November 7, 2011

With skirts!


Now it has skirts! Everyone say ooooooh!


The skirts are 3 half circles per layer (there are two layers) that's just been sewn together using my wonderful serger and then hemmed with crinoline (again, using the serger.) If you are planning to do any appreciable amount of sewing I highly recommend getting a serger. They are amazing and save you so much time. In the process of fitting the skirts though I realized I had a problem: I want the skirts to sit just above my hips so that means the opening needs to be smaller than my hips, but I also am not putting a zipper in so the problem is getting the skirts over my hips so they will stay. My solution is to put in a snap closure so that it can be open while I slide the dress on and then discreetly snap shut under the bodice and be hidden out of sight. That's the next step followed by actually attaching the skirts to the bodysuit.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Updated dress sketch

I promised an updated dress sketch, so here it is!
Qualities not great, sorry!
My green pen sadly exploded recently so I couldn't make it actually green, but the purple will have to work as a stand in. The solid purple is satin chiffon, the dotted is georgette, and the striped is organza (with crinoline in the bottom). I debating putting boning in the bodice to give it that nice shape, but the stoning also adds some stiffness so I might not. It has skirts now but my cell phone camera was being fussy and deleted the pictures before I got to transfer them.