The Wedding Dress -- It's a Dress Rehearsal, Not Just Practice

This weekend was productive and unproductive -- all at the same time. I got the entire bodice put together and then took the whole thing apart again. There were two problems. First, the bodice did not fit Monica and since Monica is set to the approximate size of DD, the bodice would not fit DD. The bodice was approximately 1 to 2 inches too big all the way around at every measurement. I can only guess that since the bodice is cut on the bias and I washed the fabric first; that as I handled it, the muslin stretched back out a little. It is cotton and cotton will stretch a little -- kind of like how blue jeans always fit looser a couple of hours after you put them on. Secondly, I disliked how the gathers at the sides looked -- uneven and sloppy. So that meant that I had to adjust all of the pattern pieces for size and re-do the gathering.

I took most of the pieces apart, removed all of the old gathering stitches from the front and back drape pieces, and ironed everything carefully. Then using the marks that I made while Monica was wearing the bodice, I redrew some of the seam lines on both the base and the drape pieces using my new fashion ruler.

After redrawing the seam lines, I restitched all of the gathering lines in triplicate. (Note the stitching line on the left is the seam line.) This time, I used a method that I found on Sew Much Good. This method does not lengthen the stitch at all, but loosens the upper tension allowing the bottom thread to be pulled -- gathering the fabric. This method seemed to work much better for me. I got a much more even gather than I did before.

I then hand basted the gathered drape onto the base fabric following the sewn seam line. I like the result of this much better (see picture at the top of the page). I keep forgetting that the muslin is not just a practice dress, but a dress rehearsal dress. Ask anyone who has performed -- there is a difference. Therefore, I need to be as meticulous with this one as I will be with the real one.

For now, I have a lot of basting left to do. As soon as I have pictures of a completed bodice, you'll be the first to see!

Happy Basting!

The Wedding Dress -- Bodice Front

This is version #3. I know it probably does not look very different from the pictures of version #1 at first glance, but I think that the ruching looks much more even across the bust. I cannot show you version 2 as I only got one panel on and realized that it needed further adjustments, took the gathering out of one side, adjusted the seam line and put in new gathers in both panels.

Now, I will sew the ruched panels to the underlayment and see how it looks. I want to get the bodice front a little bit tighter, but that is hard to do with out having a back attached. I will try the two back panels next week. I am out of town this weekend and won't get to work on the dress at all. But I am happy with the progress thus far. The bodice is the part that scares me the most. I still have 9 weeks until the DD is home to try on the muslin.

Happy Sewing!

Correction (I'm Sari, I Made A Mistake)

After my last post, a friend of mine commented to me on facebook: "There is a difference between gathering and draping." Um, yeah, okay, but you see/hear the term used inappropriately in fashion all the time! But, that does not mean I have to follow the crowd.

Draping is creating a dress or garment simply by arranging fabric around a body using the natural fall of the fabric. The most famous drape would be the sari." And that of course is nothing like what I was doing with the wedding dress (even if the pattern pieces are named "front drape" and "back drape").

I also referred to gathering which is a term which refers to a length of fabric being drawn up into gathers and sewn into a shorter length of fabric. I am not gathering in this dress either. (Here is a fantastic tutorial by Dana at Made).

What I am actually doing on DD's wedding dress is "ruching." Ruching
is a gathered overlay. Parallel sides of the fabric are gathered and stitched to an underlayment. Often the ruching is done with a sheer such as chiffon or organza. Now that sounds like what I am doing! Ruching is commonly seen in evening wear and bathing suits. But in my research I also found examples of ruched jacket, gloves, leggings, shoes, and t-shirts.

So, now that I finally know what I am doing. I can speak with authority -- even if I haven't figured out what I am doing!

Happy Ruching!

The Wedding Dress -- We Are Gathering Here, Today

The muslin progresses. I took the pattern pieces for the drape out of Vogue 8150 and prepared the muslin pieces in the same manner as I described here. I also made another set of bodice muslin pieces of Butterick 5419 to act as the underlayment (if I may use a construction term) for the draping. I gathered the edges of the pattern per the directions and did my best to apply them to the bodice. Above you will see the results of the "marrying" of the two patterns. (Pun intended)!

I have to make some adjustments to the draping as the sweetheart neckline of the Vogue is a somewhat different shape than the Butterick 5419. Later in the week, I will take the draping down and make some adjustments to the pieces and use them like pattern pieces to make new draping pieces. The I can re-gather the fabric to see if I can get it to match up better with the bodice.

Happy gathering!

The Wedding Dress - Progress on Muslin

Over the last couple of days, there has been some progress on the wedding dress. I spent some time cutting apart the necessary pattern pieces for the draping (Vogue 8150) and the skirt (McCall 6701). I then ironed each piece with a cool iron, marked the stitching line and lengthened the grain line. The tough part is trying to figure out where to finish the top of the skirt since the dress is made with full length panels from bust to floor (see photo above). Considering that I am taking parts of this dress from Butterick, McCall and Vogue, I should be calling this the Wedding Dress of Frankenstein.

I have been keeping track of the number of yards of muslin that I have used. This will give me a good idea of how many yards of fashion fabric that I will need to buy. I cannot rely on the package estimates because I am only using parts of each pattern. There will be a lot of yards of fabric.

Today, Monica arrived. Who's Monica you ask? Why it is Monica Mannequin our new family member. Do you think that it is weird to name your dress form? Yeah , I know --weird.

But she was quick to set up and not too hard to get into the correct measurements. However, every body is different and I had to pad out some areas to get them to the right shape, so I took some quilt batting and padded out Monica's figure to match DD's.

In order to keep the batting on, I took an old T-shirt, cut off the sleeves. Then I used my new serger to serge up the sleeve holes and take in the waist. Now it fits Monica like a glove and keeps the padding where it is needed.


Here you can see that Monica now has a nice round feminine shape instead a flat-as-a-board stomach. I may have to adjust this a little when the real DD comes up for her fitting in November, but this will give me approximates. Now that Monica has arrived, it will be easier to see how the pieces that I construct will look on a human. It is hard to see how it looks on me and my husband refuses no matter how much he loves me. Monica and I have some work to do -- we will blog our progress later!

Happy sewing!

And THIS is the Reason I Make Baby Quilts!

Momma says little Sofia loves her quilt and is enjoying playing with it! She just laughs at it! And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is all the thanks I need! Some people say a picture is worth a thousand words -- it is also worth all the pin pricks, all the hand sewing, all the calculating and figuring -- all the work!

"Mom! Look! It's so pink!"

And one more shot, because two are just not enough!

And I am HAPPY!

Baby Quilt Saga Continues

I could have had this quilt done earlier in the week, but I was busy with the boning for the wedding dress. This was what I was trying to finish yesterday when I had disaster #1. Despite all of the activity surrounding it, this quilt was easy to construct and went pretty quickly. I had actually created the four blocks at the same time as I did another set back in November when my DD; the knitting sister and had a Thanksgiving quilt-a-thon. The other quilt was just like this but with a blue cap and red shoes.

The inner border is a 2 X 2 block similar to what I did with the skull quilt and the outer border is a modified log cabin round. This border is nice because each side is the same length and width and you don't need corner blocks. The trick is to measure the length of the center quilt -- in this case 24 1/2 inches; adding the width of your planned strip -- for this quilt 7 inches; and less the two 1/4 inch seam widths. So the size of the strip was 31 inches X 7 inches.

The second trick to constructing the quilt is that the first side must be sewn part way in a method known as "partial seam construction." Kind of obvious, right? Since I am too busy to do a tutorial myself, I found one that I think is really well done on Fresh Lemons to share with you. She has done an excellent job of explaining the technique -- I think you will find it very easy to follow.

Next in line will be another girl quilt which is also using up blocks from the Thanksgiving quilt-a-thon.

Happy quilting!

The Wedding Dress - Disaster #1

I am naming this Disaster #1 because I expect with as difficult of a project as a wedding dress is combined with my lack of attention and my bull-in-a-china-shop sewing philosophy this will not be the last disaster! I decided that the 4 longer strips of boning needed to be heated again and straightened a little better. After putting them in a pot of boiling water, I went to work on my current quilt project. An hour later I smelled burning plastic.

The pot is ruined. I have to buy more boning. Would you call this a sewing disaster, cooking disaster or both?

This was not Happy Anything!

The Wedding Dress - 1st Attempt at Placing Boning

So this was a new thing for me. If you have ever worn a strapless dress, more than likely you are familiar with boning. It is called "boning" because of one of the original materials: whale bone. Boning today is usually made with plastic or metal and can be bought with or without pre-made channels. For purposes of making the muslin for DD wedding dress, I bought some inexpensive boning with channels at my local big box craft center.

Since I had never used boning in any sewing project, I had to do some research on the internet. I found two terrific blogs on how to apply it in a strapless dress. These two blogs are so well done, that I am not going to try to reinvent the wheel and do my own how-to, but I will direct you to Sewaholic and Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing for detailed instructions on preparing the boning and applying it to the bodice.

I did use Sewaholic's method of heating up the plastic boning in a pot on the stove to reduce the curl in the plastic. This worked great and made it much easier to insert the boning in the channels. I also used her suggestion to use a nail file to smooth out the ends after trimming them  to a curve.

Although I used the purchased boning channels, I really like the method that Gertie used for her dress. I can see where the purchase boning channels could be too bulky -- especially when you are dealing with fine fabrics like silk. I may do that in the final rendition of the dress.

These are the channels in the front of the dress under the bust. I had to guesstimate the length that they need to be. I cut the boning to 9 1/2 inches, sewed the bottom shut and then sewed them carefully on both sides of the channel to the inside of the front princess seam. In the picture on the left you can see that I have completed the application of one channel and have the second one pinned to death.

You may also notice that I have marked the channel
with the length of the boning. I figured that two or 3 months from now, when I fit the dress on DD, I won't remember the length and instead of having to re-measure it, I can just read it off the channel! Well, I have a few more channels to apply so I'll leave it at that.

I just checked on the dress form and it has shipped and is destined to arrive on Tuesday! Yea!

Happy Sewing!

The Wedding Dress - Bodice In Construction

After marking all of the pattern pieces yesterday, today, I sewed along all of the seam lines and then attached all of the pieces. Above is the base bodice constructed. The pattern has the zipper up the back, but because of the draping in the construction of Vogue 8150 which will go over the base, I am putting the zipper on the left side instead of the back. I want to try putting the boning in tomorrow.

I realized that I should have ordered the dress form last week. I really need it in order to properly drape the bodice. I found one with the right measurements on-line and ordered it -- unfortunately, it won't arrive until the end of next week. I guess I will continue to cut out and mark pattern pieces.

Happy construction!

The Wedding Dress - Preparing the Pattern for the Bodice

Since my work has instituted a new "use it or loose it" vacation policy, I am taking this whole week off for vacation. My eighty-nine year old father has come to stay with me for a few days and this morning we sat at my dining room table and while he read to me stories that he had written about his childhood, I began my DD's wedding gown.

This is View A of Butterick 5419 that I am using as the base for the bodice draping. It is a very plain strapless bodice with a sweetheart neckline. The fitted princess seamed top comes down to the hip-line and therefore needs to fit closely at bust, waist and hip. Conestoga wagons carried my ancestors from North Carolina to Indiana after the civil war.


While my dad read the stories about his family that he wrote down over 2 decades ago, I separated the sheets of tissue paper to find pattern pieces numbered 1 through 4. My grandfather had been born by this time and was growing up with his grandparents as his mother died in childbirth. I cut the pattern pieces out and ironed them with a cool iron to get out all of the wrinkles. Next, I measured all of the pattern pieces to find out their dimensions. I compared DD's measurements to each piece and determined which ones would have to be adjusted and how.

By this time, my grandfather got his inheritance of land when his grandfather died and he sold it to his uncle and was able to take two years of college. I cut the pattern pieces à la my practice pattern for adjustments to the hips and bust. I know the waist will be too big, but I will take that in during the fitting.

World War I saw my grandfather in the army for only 10 months. He missed action over seas -- as an educated man, he was made a corporal and acted as secretary to an army general. I marked the pieces with the seam allowances so that I can mark the muslin next. You can see where I increased the width of the side back to adjust the hip to a larger size.

My grandfather was already a widower whose first wife died during the pandemic of the Spanish Flu. My grandmother was worked as a nurse and as a phone operator around the time that my grandfather met her. They were married by the Justice of the Peace. I'll get started marking the muslin tonight after dinner. I am hoping my father will continue to read to me as I work. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and we used to . . .

Happy story telling!

Fishing for compliments?

So, what do you think? Here is the completed quilt top for "Go Fish!" which I showed you partially finished a couple of posts ago. The 39 inch square quilt features 16 fish swimming in formation with each border the same fabric as one of the fish. Yes, it is colorful and the borders are completely crazy, but it is finished! The recipient is a baby boy that was born in April.