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Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Yesterday's Progress on the Wedding Dress



So far so good. I'm pleased with how things are coming along. Yesterday I sewed the bodice pieces. This was (in reverse order from how you see the dress), the lining, the corset, then the top layer has the underlining, the base fabric (a polyester shantung), organza, and lace. After I sewed the bodice pieces together with the organza layer on top, my daughter came in to look at it and said, "I wanted the other lace on the top"! Fortunately it only meant taking out the side seams since the lace needed to cover the top with as little seams showing as possible. But that was a trick on the front, getting the lace to look right without the seams over the bust area. I ended up basting the lace down while the backing part was placed over a pressing ham to get the curves right. It worked. Then the lace edging was cut around the design and tacked on to the top of the bodice piece. You can see by the picture that the bottom part of the lace is not tacked down yet. It will be, but since there is a lot of beading to add, I didn't see any sense to do this now.
The waistband was tricky too. It consists of underlining and the base fabric with the organza fabric gathered on top. When I first gathered the organza and put it on top of the base I could see that it was going to be difficult to get the gathers to look nice all the way across. So I ran gathering stitches about every 6 inches all the way across the waistband. Then after gathering all those areas I had someone hold each end of the waistband while I ironed the gathering all the way down the length of the waistband. Then I took out the gathering basting. It made it look much better.
Today I will start on the skirt and train. This time I will ask my daughter what it's supposed to look like before I sew anything :)

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