The Bodice Begins to Come Together

First thing in putting this bodice together is to iron the interfacing (a stiffening fabric I added to the inside of the bodice to keep the tops of the sweetheart from drooping)  to the sliver fabric.  This also is when I would take a long stitch (also called a basting stitch) completely around the outside of the pieces.  This will stitch the lace to the silver piece.  This allows me to treat the three pieces of fabric as one piece when sewing them together.  My original plan had been to do this for all the pieces of the bodice before putting them together, but then I got excited.

I basted together the center piece of the bodice, and the two that attach to that.  Then I had to put them together!  So that's what the pictures are.  It's going to be so pretty!!!!!

The Christmas Fitting and Cutting of the Dress

So over Christmas - I brought the dress with me to Mom's so that we could have one last fitting on the length of skirt.  So I put Gina in the dress, and cut the skirt to correct length.  She is wearing her green shoes (the ones she plans on wearing at the wedding) under the dress, so that I can get the length close.  I cut the lining, the skirt, and the bottom layer. Lola decided she was going to help me.  Thanks girl!

Once I took the dress home - I again corrected the pattern.  Correcting the bodice was easy - and the length of the skirts was easy too.  Then came the hard part.  I needed to adjust the layers so that they came out looking even.  The hard part is that the top two layers overlap the layer below them by 2 inches (in measurement - less in reality because of the poofyness of the skirt).  However, the bottom layer doesn't overlap anything.  So I needed to make that layer naturally longer to manage to make them all "look" the same length.  After some fun math (go algebra!) I got it figured out.

Next came the scary part - cutting the real fabric - the expensive fabric.  Scary!

First thing I did was create a cut list.  For anyone who's built something in a wood-shop - you already have the concept.  Essentially it just states what pieces, out of what materials, and how many of each to create the entire dress.

First I cut the silver fabric - this is the sateen that is the layer that will be viewed through the lace.  Not super scary.  It's best to cut all the pieces out of one type of fabric at a time - it allows you to use the fabric most economically.

Second, I cut the lining fabric.  This one is slightly stretchy along it's cross grain - so I decided to change the direction in which I cut the bodice.  The lining is the piece that has the lace up part in the back that helps hold the dress on Gina - so I wanted as little stretch as possible there.  Also not super scary to cut.

Then came the lace.  Super scary.  Beautiful expensive lace.  I laid out the pieces, and then had to talk myself into actually cutting it.  It was the getting started that was scary - once I was moving along I was okay.  One thing I had to make sure of on the lace was that everything had an "up".  This lace doesn't have a "good" side and a "bad" side, but it does have an up and a down.  There are flowers on it - and I needed to make sure that all the flowers were pointed up - otherwise the eye would be drawn to what was different.




Once I cut the whole dress out - I laid the lace pieces on the silver pieces, and laid the whole bodice out together.  That's this final picture below.