In Progress
Honeymoon lingerie - two more nightgown muslins
30 August 2010, 20:20After my first muslin of a potential honeymoon nightgown knocked that pattern out of the running, I turned to the slip dress pattern (#219) from the May 2010 issue of Manequim magazine as my next candidate.
This is a simple bias dress with bust darts and bias edge on the neckline. The pattern calls for you to have two lengths of bias edging – the longer one finishes the neckline from the front bust peak, under the arms, around the back and up to the other bust peak. The shorter length of bias finishes the neckline in the centre front portion and continues up to form the straps. Since I didn’t have any suitable lightweight muslin in my stash, I sacrificed this bamboo-printed Robert Kauffman cotton I’d bought on a binge at equilter.com about 6-7 years ago. I hadn’t decided what to do with it between then and now so I figured it’d be good for a wearable muslin.
It went together super quickly, but on my first fitting it was apparent that the bust dart was ridiculously too high. Then I realised that half the problem was that the straps were about 3 inches too short, so I jury-rigged some elastic and bra hoops to elongate the straps, but even then, the bust dart was not pretty.
Look, it’s too high even on Susan’s hard and perky bosom after the fix:
So I crossed this off the list of candidates for a honeymoon nightie, but then, actually… I had no more candidates. And then I suddenly recalled that BurdaStyle’s Bambi pattern actually looks really great without those weird wing-flap things (seriously what are those??). So I whipped up a quick muslin of that, and it’s cute! Really cute, actually. It’s also one of their free patterns, fyi!
Instead of their instructions to zigzag over round elastic, I opted instead to use elastic thread in the bobbin, which works well, but if you’re making this yourself, do the shirring absolutely last, AFTER attaching all the back pieces together. It’s way easier that way than trying to wrestle the un-gathered back shirt onto the shirred upper back.
And now that my nightie pattern is set, I had a full day of Fabric Tetris on Saturday laying out all the combined pieces of Bambi and the awesome Allie robe pattern onto Shasha’s Malaysian silks. It was a realy difficult task, but I finally got a workable solution that fits both into the 2m of turquoise silk satin and 2m of blue floral silk jacquard so that the various panels look good.
I machine washed both (go go Delicates cycle) and line dried because nightwear really needs to be machine washed when in use so I wanted to treat the fabric how the finished garment will be treated. Then on Sunday I managed to sew together the silk Bambi, complete with French seams and everything. And it feels ultra luxe!
This is all you’re getting to see of it until the honeymoon though:
Oh and speaking of waiting patiently, I should point out that even though we’re getting married on 18th September, we have another reception in Pennsylvania on the 25th for everyone who couldn’t fly over, so I won’t be posting full wedding gown photos until 26th September. It’s just not fair for friends and family coming to the PA reception to see it first on the internet and not on me! But I should hopefully have good photos of the bridesmaids dresses and other wedding stuff during that week in between so it won’t be a complete tease…
Next up: the luxurious silk robe, Allie!
Tags: burda-style, lingerie, manequim, silk, weddingComment [8]
DIY Wedding Gown - attaching the bodice and skirt
28 August 2010, 14:27Finally I can give you another progress report on the wedding gown! Don’t worry, as you can see below, I’ve been continuing to work on it on my weekends and Wedsnesdays, so I’ve got a lot of progress to cover!
For the first time I got to turn my attentions to the skirt, which is exactly as it was when it was attached to Granny’s dress, albeit separated from the bodice at the (very gathered) waist seam. But there was a prominent blue stain in the centre front (CF) panel at about thigh-height from the blue tissue paper it was wrapped in for 60+ years, so the first step was to unpick and remove that entire panel. I then moved the two triangular sections that had been on either side of it together to form a new CF:
I actually prefer the way these two look together, forming a beautiful triangular, almost art-Deco detail at the CF!
But back to the bodice, where I had completed prickstitching along the entire neck and arm edges. I just free-handed this without my post-it guide and I actually think this looks better than my zipper insertion!
As I described a few days ago, I discovered a discrepancy in the lengths of my bodice front waist seams, so I made the choice to take in the bodice at the bottom few inches of one of the right front seams to make the waist seam even on the left and right. In the end, this fix only took about a half hour to unpick, machine stitch, and re-catchstitch the seam allowances and it totally fixed the problem! So I really consider that a win, and I had enough ease there that losing 4cm at the waist seam was not a problem in terms of fit.
So with both sides of the bodice waist seam of equal lengths, I could then align the two side seams and the CF and CB of the bodice and skirt, and pin the excess into pleats. I chose to have double pleats in the back and single pleats in the front because I love the way they looked! Removing that centre panel fortuitously means I have less fabric in the front than in the back resulting in a flatter, slimmer line in the front!
Once I was happy with the pinned pleats, I hand basted the pleats in place. At the CF I’m having a basque (pointed, V shaped) waistline, so I followed Bridal Couture’s instructions for sewing this:
- I basted a small square of silk organza on the inside of the skirt around the point of the V
- Using the sewing machine, I staystitched along the waistline of the skirt, and then along the waistline of the bodice, making an X at the point of the V rather than pivoting my stitches
- I clipped to the V at the skirt (thank you, organza!)
- I then machine-stitched the waistline with the bodice underneath, following the staystitches of the bodice exactly so that I stitched an X at the point rather than a V, and so doing it in two passes
And just like magic, I got a lovely point without any bubbling!
And here’s the back view:
It’s funny what a big difference adding the skirt makes – before it was just a bodice but now… holy crap I’ve made my wedding gown!!
So after that I inserted all the boning pieces back into their casings, stitched the ends of the casings closed, pressed the waist seam allowances toward the bodice and catchstitched those into place. So now the only things left to do on the gown are… (drumroll anyone?)
- Fell-stitch the lining to the underlining along the waist seam and zipper tape
- Add bra strap retainers at the shoulder seams (and possibly further down, too)
- Hemming! Which I definitely need help with as I’ve still got a good foot or two of train to make into a nice curve. But happily the original dress just has a neat, 1/4” machine stitched hem so I’m just going to copy that where I need to fill in the holes
(I decided against adding hanging loops because I only ever want to store this gown flat)
So with the dress nearly done, and with three weeks left, I now get to play with my headband fascinator and silk lingerie! Yayyy!
Tags: dress, silk, vintage, weddingComment [8]
Bridal bodice - a slight (but fixable) setback
24 August 2010, 13:34Apologies for the photo-less post, but with four weeks to go to the wedding, the planning has gone from busy-but-manageable to STRESSAPALOOZA! And as a result, I haven’t had a chance to take the photos of my beautiful lining prickstitching off the camera yet.
But before I forget, I wanted to describe a slight setback I ran into in preparing to attach the skirt to the bodice. To start the process I removed the central skirt panel that contained the blue dye stain (from the tissue paper it was stored in for 60 years), and sewed the two gored sections together, which makes a really unexpectedly beautiful central detail. But as I was lining up the centre front, centre back, and side seams on the skirt and bodice to make the skirt pleats, I kept having excess fabric on one side of the front skirt.
Scratching my head, I measured the front of the skirt, and the CF is indeed central. So then I measured the seam line of my bodice, and ERRRRRRRR! the right side is 27cm to the CF point and the left is 24cm. So that’s why I was having excess skirt fabric on the left but having it match almost exactly on the right.
So I put it all back in its box and mulled over what to do for a bit. Adding fabric (either to the bodice or skirt) is impossible, so the solution is to either take away 3cm from the right side of the bodice, or from the left side of the skirt. and the more I thought about it, the more I realised what had happened – when I elongated the waist and added length to all the bodice pieces, I flared out the pieces slightly below the waist (logically, because my high hip is not as small as my waist). But because the right side has three seamlines and the left doesn’t have any, I had inadvertently added some room on the right side…
So I’m going to double-check with a quick fitting, but I think I’m going to trying pinching a little bit out of the right side seam lines (even though that means unpicking a few inches of stitching and catchstitching, because I’m making it smaller, my current seamline needle holes won’t show) and if I can’t pinch out all 3cm, then I’ll take a slight amount out from the left side of the skirt. But really, the length difference is only noticeable because of the skirt pleating inbalance – when I’m wearing just the bodice, it doesn’t look uneven in the slightest.
(Yes, this is the part where all of you who suggested I muslin the skirt get that smug look on your face! But my original reasons for not muslining the skirt still hold, and fixing this won’t put me back more than a day anyway so I stand by my earlier decision!)
Coming up…
The weird and wonderful August La Mia Boutique! (But more importantly, HOLY CRAP, Burda’s September issue is SMOKIN’ hot! I’ve counted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 MUST-SEWS for me in this issue! That’s more than the entire previous year combined!)
Comment [5]
Bridal bodice - buttons, lining and shopping!
16 August 2010, 14:35Ok after that little lingerie diversion (and a day spent being filmed for BBC1!), we’re back on the wedding gown!
First up was a quick fitting of the shell with all the boning pieces inserted and the waist stay hooked. And I can breathe a sigh of relief, because it’s looking good. A tiny bit of horizontal pulls around the zipper (which can be fixed by laying off the ice cream a bit) and a bit of boning show-through at the centre front (which I’m going to hold off worrying about for now, but I may just shorten that boning piece so it stops below the bust).
So I can push on ahead, safe in the knowledge that there’s no major fitting issues…
First up – I sewed on all 13 original covered buttons along the right side’s zipper, matching up with the original satin loops I placed along the overlap during the zipper insertion step.
On the surface, these look like ordinary covered buttons, but look at the underside!
I’ve never seen buttons like this before in my life! Instead of a shank with a hole, there’s a mound of stuffed fabric to sew through! What a strange vintage detail! I’ve learned so much from taking the original gown apart…
Here are the buttons, closed through all their loops (partially to show my mom that it can be done, since I’m assuming she’ll be my chief dressing assistant on the morning…)
Then with the buttons sewed into place, I could attach the last boning channel, along the zipper’s tape (covering up the button stitching). Also, this photo has just reminded me that I forgot to tack down the seam allowances here after attaching the zipper…
I finished the assembly of the blue silk crepe lining (by machine), pressed and clipped all the seam allowances to the inside, then painstakingly pinned the lining to the shell at the neckline and armhole edges.
Then I started to fell-stitch the lining to the shell along the edges:
I got most of the fell stitching done before I lost my enthusiasm for the day, but it was all going rather faster than I thought. I ended up with some extra lining at the shoulder seams but I had thought I might so I only basted those seams so it’s not too bad to tuck the excess fabric under to fix it.
I forgot to take photos of them, but I also machine-stitched two wide buttonholes in the lining near the zipper opening for the waist stay to feed through. This would’ve been much easier to do before attaching the lining to the bodice, but I forgot about it until half my fell stitching was done!
Shopping!
I walk to work every day, both ways, and on my way, I pass by a fantastic vintage shop called This Shop Rocks on Brick Lane. The owner really knows his stuff and buys exquisite individual pieces rather than “vintage by the barrel” and has a fantastic eye for hats, bags, and jewellery in particular. Anyway, I’ve had my eye on two cream, vintage beaded clutches that have been in the window for a few weeks now, but the shop keeps weird hours so they’re normally closed when I walk past in the morning and evening. But they happened to be open on Friday night so I walked in and asked about this beauty in the window…
I was thinking in my mind that I’d pay up to £40 for it, so I was tickled when the owner took it out of the window for me and we saw the £26 price tag inside! And then I was ridiculously happy when it rang up as £13 at the till because of their “Everything is 50% sale!!” OMFG! (Seriously, if you are anywhere near Brick Lane, you have GOT to get down there while the sale is still on!)
The colour is a perfect match for my gown, the beading is 99.9% perfect (I’ve found one spot where exactly 3 beads have come off. That’s IT), and it’s big enough for my iPhone and makeup. This clutch has made me so happy I was doing the happy, giggly dance all evening!
On Saturday we drove down to Brighton to buy the suit James had his eye on since we were down with my mom last June. It’s from the Jump the Gun mod suit shop in the North Laines, and it is totally gorgeous. The only problem was that it didn’t go with the shoes he’d bought for the wedding, so he needed to get different ones. He ended up finding two perfect pairs!
Not one to be outdone, I was keeping my eyes open for wedding shoes of my own, and I fell in love with these adorable Red “Bow Belle” shoes from the Irregular Choice boutique shop in the North Laines. I mean, how adorable! Little red leather bows and an ankle strap! And they’re so comfortable, too! They’ll be my hidden little secret until I kick my feet up on the dancefloor.
So I was feeling pretty happy with myself and we were about to head to the car and back to London when- oh my god that is NOT what I think it is- holy crap it’s a United Nude OUTLET SHOP!
Now, Terra Plana/United Nude are a rather boutique brand of shoes so I never expected them to have an outlet shop in a million years, nor put it in Brighton. If you recall, they made those blue/green shoe boots that are quite possibly be my favourites ever. Complete strangers still stop me on the street to compliment me every single time I wear them, even now, two years later. And here was an entire shop full of their lovely and supremely comfortable and stylish shoes, at prices way WAY cheaper than I’ve ever seen them even in the depths of the January sales!
I feel I was rather restrained in only buying two pairs (okay, James bought one of them for me since I couldn’t decide!) of their “Elastic Pumps” (in Burgundy mix and Jazzmatazz (black & blue) for £50 each. BARGAIN.
And how could I possibly go to Brighton and not stop in at my (quite possibly) favourite fabric shop ever, Dittto?
Since I know I’m going to NYC soon I restrained myself massively, but I couldn’t resist buying more of that amaaaaazing stretch black denim (which you’ll remember from my designer jeans), which is now definitively labelled as ex-Prada (woo!) and some super soft, pale pink viscose jersey which I bought to overlay with that grey stretch lace I bought in Paris:
Seriously, though, I could’ve done some MAJOR damage there – they had more of that amazing ex-Armani wool jersey in a dark teal, and an ex-D&G mohair sweater knit that felt just as soft as the one I used to make my Brit chic sweater. And I was talking with the owner, who was saying they’re totally revamping their online shop soon with a new storage premises, too, so they’ll be able to take more photos and list a lot more of their stock online AND have a fully automated, streamlined ordering process, too. So that’s fantastic news for us UK garment sewers!!
(I was also a bit naughty and bought some more stuff from Fabric.com this week to come over in suitcases in September, which you can see in my online fabric gallery…)
Next up: finish fell-stitching the lining, then go around those same edges and prick stitch the lining to stop it from peeking out, and then…. GASP! start on the skirt.
Tags: dress, shopping, silk, vintage, weddingComment [12]
Honeymoon Lingerie - nightgown muslin
10 August 2010, 14:10True confessions – I took a brief break from the wedding gown. I don’t deal well with long projects and I was getting really itchy to complete something (I didn’t have any completed projects in July because of the gown, aaaaagghh!).
So I took one evening out to do a test run of one of the patterns I’d earmarked for honeymoon lingerie and Shasha’s Malaysian silks, Burda 7418 (on the right in my earlier image below):
This is a brand-new Burda envelope pattern, but I just went and bought the pdf version instead because a) I’m impatient, b) the pdf patterns are way cheaper than the paper versions (we have a laser printer and printer paper is cheap!), c) piecing together pdf patterns takes only 5 minutes longer than tracing a paper pattern and I can do it sitting down, and d) no seam allowances, woooooooop!
This was my first downloadable pattern from the German Burda site, and I was pleased to find that the instructions were in nine languages, with fully illustrated instructions. I was expecting it to just be in German! But do pay attention to the print preview, though, because you may not need to print the last ten pages or so (the English instructions only take up a few pages). The only weird thing is that they decided to waste some paper giving us two side panel pattern pieces (one to be cut in lace and the other in self-fabric) and the two pieces are absolutely identical. Weird.
When they say stretch satin (or jersey), they mean it, despite my flat-pattern measuring thinking there’d probably be enough ease there! This really hugs my curves nicely, but it’s just too tight to be comfortable enough to sleep in (lots of horizontal pulling wrinkles…). And you really don’t want to be adding zippers or buttons onto sleepwear! So if I make this again, I’ll be doing it in a poly stretch satin or going up to a size 44.
But the whole point of this was to test and see if it’d work well in my non-stretch silk charmeuse, and this Ikea cotton print was just languishing in my stash anyway after the Alexander dress (it’s too distinctive to use in another dress). So as far as I’m concerned, this nightie served it’s purpose, and I got my answers, without too much time lost at all.
Front detail:
One thing I didn’t like about this pattern was that it just had you finish the top edge by folding down the seam allowance and zigzag stitching over it – sloppy. And you’re just supposed to clip the point of the V and fold it inwards, which leaves a bare edge to fray there, too. So if I’d do this again, I’d either create a narrow facing or narrow bias edge (with the latter method, treat the V neck as a curve to bind it, and then pinch the V and secure with a few stitches at the very end to make a sharp point).
Another minor issue is that this pattern calls for you to create narrow straps and then use bra rings and sliders to make the straps adjustable. Which is a nice touch and all, but completely unnecessary for something with as little support as this that’s being worn only by one person (how likely is it that your strap length is going to change during the life of the nightown?). Save yourself some time and just use fixed straps or some nice plush bra strap elastic if you’ve got some on hand like I did.
But the other problem with this pattern is one I don’t know how to fix!
Pointy boobs!
I mean, think of how smooth the curve is on your average princess seam… and look at the inset corner there (yes, I know it’s only half the seam as a princess, but really, my point, err, stands.). Holy Madonna! (Though now as I think about it, I suppose I could do some pattern manipulation of both sides of that seam to make a curve there rather than a sharp point…? Maybe one to save for after the wedding madness though.)
So since this was too tight to wear and was essentially just a muslin anyway, I gave it to Neighbour Jamaica, who’s a size smaller than me and in need of cheering up!
So my thought now for the silky honeymoon nightgown is to do a test-run of the slip-dress pattern from the May 2010 Manequim magazine (#219) before I cut into those silks:
And to prove this really was only a one-night diversion, here’s the front half of my bridal bodice lining, all nicely assembled and pressed:
The silk crepe was being really ornery when I went to thread baste it, and it wasn’t holding a chalk line well, either. So I just went for my usual eyeball-it method of seam allowances, since it works well for all my other garment sewing, and accuracy in the lining isn’t quite as important as in the shell.
Next up: continuing on with the lining assembly…
Tags: burda, cotton, lingerie, muslin, weddingComment [6]
Bridal bodice - finishing the edges, waist stay, and zipper
5 August 2010, 17:44The next step in my epic wedding gown project was to properly finish the neckline and armhole edges in advance of the lining. Instead of most lined garments where you construct the outer shell, construct the inner shell, then place the two together, right sides facing and sew around the opening edges, in this case Bridal Couture advises us to construct the outer shell, fold in the opening edge seam allowances, then create the lining, with the opening edges similarly folded inside, and then place the two together wrong sides facing and very carefully fell-stitch along the opening edges, prickstitching the lining where necessary.
So here are the neckline and armhole opening edges, nicely clipped, pressed, and catchstitched:
The next step was to add the waist stay, tacked to the boning channels with bottom edge of grosgrain on the marked waistline:
(I’ll tack down the bottom edge of the waist stay after a fitting session with the waist stay, boning, and zipper in place.)
Here’s my own stroke of genuis – I used a bra fastener on the ends of the waist stay rather than sewing on your own double hook and eyes. They’re readymade, already padded, with the hook & eyes securely fastened AND you get a bit of room to expand or contract (bring on the wedding cake!). The 70p this fastener cost me was well worth it in terms of the time it saved and the added piece of mind that those hooks will NOT be coming off!
From the original gown, there were nine tiny covered buttons on the centre back of the illusion neckline, and two each on the wrists, and I really wanted to reuse these somehow… And all lucky 13 of them fit perfectly into the side seam of the bodice when placed end to end. How cool is that?? As a bonus, the loops (usually a fiddly process) are already formed and affixed to a netting backing, so these were SUPER easy to attach.
First I hand sewed the back/left edge of the vintage brass zipper (taken from the original gown), and basted the three loop sections onto a bit of scrap satin which will form the facing of the zipper overlap (on the front/right hand side).
Then I pinned the looped facing section face down onto the front/right hand edge of the side seam (which will form the overlap of the lapped zipper).
I machine stitched along my previous basting stitches, turned and pressed it, which gave me loads of gorgeous loops along the edge.
Then I hand basted the facing onto the remaining side of the zipper tape before very carefully prickstitching through all layers to attach the overlap to the zipper. This is the first time I’ve prickstitched a zipper but it wasn’t difficult at all, especially compared to inserting invisible zippers by hand!
I did cheat a bit, though – I marked out 5mm increments onto a post-it note (the only sticky substance I trusted not to rub off on the vintage silk!) and used this to keep my stitches even along both the edge of the paper and at even intervals along my marks.
This zipper with the looped edge is another part of this dress that made me do an embarrassing happy dance all around the boat!
I’ll sew on all 13 covered buttons before affixing the lining to the zipper edge, and I’ll need to do that before I attach that last boning channel along the zipper tape, too.
RIP: My favourite long, sharp basting needle, snapped in half while running the thread through beeswax for the zipper insertion. Sob! Now I’m stuck with the super short, sharp basting needle while I contemplate spending the shipping costs on a replacement…
Up next: a quick test-fit before tacking the bottom edge of the waist stay, sewing on the covered buttons, and attaching that boning channel. And cutting out the lining pieces in my blue silk crepe for a (hopefully) quick machine assembly.
Tags: dress, silk, weddingComment [10]
Bridal bodice - boning
2 August 2010, 13:42With the seams (mostly) constructed and all the seam allowances tacked down, it was time for the boning! Bridal Couture assumes that you’ve got a fairly standard princess-seamed bodice and so advises that you sew the channels to the centre of the underlining pieces at the very beginning before attaching the underlining to the fashion fabric. But my bodice has all sorts of crazy seams and the boning crosses over a bunch of seamlines, so I had to obviously apply my channels after the main seams were stitched, as Susan Khalje advises in this Threads article.
I was originally thinking to make my own channels with silk organza, but then I saw that the Sewing Chest had pre-made and seam-free cotton channels so I bought those and ended up going with that instead to save myself some time. And as Ms Khalje talks about using them herself, I figured it’s okay!
So I started a production line – first I sewed the end of the channel closed with the sewing machine, then I carefully pinned the channel to the bodice underlining where it was needed, then cut the end just before the seamline at the bottom of the bodice. Once all the channels were in place, I then catchstitched them all to the flannel underlining, keeping the bottom free to insert the boning.
Here you can see all the channels, minus the one going on the zipper tape (to be attached after the zipper is in place):
Details of all that catchstitching… I’m going through the ivory silk thread at an alarming rate!
And here’s the correct side of that side seam seen above. I’m quite proud of my seam matching!
After the photos were taken and the channels were in, I sewed the shoulder seams and catchstittched those allowances, too, so I could get a feel for the fit with the boning in place.
This was my first time working with spiral steel boning, but it won’t be the last! It’s cheap, super flexible in 360 degrees, and not stiff or curved in the slightest like the covered plastic boning. And because you’re dealing with channels, you can remove the boning while you’re working on the garment and just pop them in at the last second. If you’ve ever worked with boning of any type, you know how a garment takes on a life of its own once the boning is attached and you’re wrestling to get it under the machine!
You can buy spiral steel boning in pre-cut lengths, but none of these lengths matched what I actually needed so would have to be cut down. So instead I opted instead to buy it in one continuous length so I wouldn’t have any waste, and I could trim and cap it as I liked.
How to cut spiral steel boning
Gather your materials – spiral steel boning, end caps (two for each length of boning in the same width as your boning!), needlenose pliers, and wire cutters.
Using the wire cutters, snip through just one wire on one side. Do NOT cut across the whole boning! If your cutters are anything like mine, it may not cut the whole way through so you may need to twist and bend it til it snaps at the weak spot you’ve just made…
Snip the wire on the other side from your first cut…
Pull the sides apart, and grab an end cap…
Put the end cap over the end of your boning and squeeze the sides of the end cap with pliers to make it tight.
Put an end cap on the other end and your boning is finished and ready for insertion!
Oh and in other news, we had a bit of a London sewing blogger mini-meetup yesterday afternoon for the Fashion & Textile Museum‘s Horrockses exhibit. Karen from Did You Make That?, Susannah from Cargo Cult Craft, and Tilly of “…and the Buttons” fame all joined me in a bunch of vintage dress drooling on a Sunday afternoon, and much fun was had by all. I was most impressed by all the wonderful vintage prints that wouldn’t be out of place in Ikea’s textile department today, though the construction details of the dresses themselves weren’t particularly original (but hey, it was RTW, not couture, so what do you expect?). Anyway, Tilly’s got some great photos up already so I don’t feel bad about not taking any myself!
Next up on the dress: clipping, turning, pressing, and catchstitching the neckline and armhole edges…
Tags: boning, dress, tutorial, weddingComment [8]
Bridal bodice - Piping and basting
30 July 2010, 13:45…in which I work with more piping than a plumber and more basting than a Thanksgiving dinner!
When I last checked in, I had cut and prepped all the pieces of the bodice, so it was now the point in my plan to sort out the piping if I was going to do so (and you’ve probably rightly concluded from the title that I did!). I had about 80cm of piping from the original dress’s waist seam, but I realised this wouldn’t be enough to pipe both sides of pieces #2 and #7 like I’d planned. So before I could do anything, I had to make some piping!
Luckily, the dress’s collar pieces were nice and long and on the bias, so this was a piece of cake. I cut four strips of 5cm wide and joined the edges together to make one long strip, then inserted my 2m of satin rattail and ran the whole thing through the sewing machine with the zipper foot.
But as I’ve already established, I can’t be making errant needle holes nor can I afford to use the seam ripper any more than what’s absolutely necessary, so in order to get the piping inserted perfectly on the first try, some hand basting was in order.
First, I basted the piping to one of the pieces, aligning the piping’s stitches with the basted seam lines:
And I did that for all four piped seams:
I made a test-run of a non-piped seam through the sewing machine just to test my confidence and to make the overall assembly a bit neater. Here’s pieces 9 & 10 joined and pressed:
So, confident that machine stitching was the ultimate end-game, I then placed the other piece on top of the piping and hand basted that on top, making sure its seamline was exactly aligned with the piece underneath. Only then did I finally run the whole lot through the sewing machine with the zipper foot, and pressing and clipping the allowances afterwards. So by the time these saw the machine, there were already four sets of hand basting here (each piece individually, then two lots for the piping!).
I don’t often sew with piping so I had forgotten what an utter joy it is to have really nicely piped seams. I’m utterly tickled with how these look – I just kept clapping my hands and giggling! And you can really see how nicely the netted sections look against the satin piping and plain sections, too!
Rather than move on and finish the bodice assembly, I thought it was better at this point to go back and do some tedious cleanup while the pieces were still relatively small. Bridal Couture says to catchstitch the seam allowances to the underlining to ensure they remain flat, especially on any curved princess seams where they tend to have a mind of their own. Since my dress is pretty much entirely curved seams, I’m just doing the lot.
And what a difference it makes! The inside is instantly looking neater, and this is something I can do easily while watching tv, so it’s easy to find time for (not that I watch much tv these days, but with True Blood and Mad Men in new seasons, it’s something I have to consider in my time management!!).
Next up: Attaching the last two pieces, sewing the side and shoulder seams, and catchstitching all of those seam allowances, too.
Tags: dress, silk, vintage, weddingComment [16]
Bridal bodice - Prepping the pieces
28 July 2010, 17:57I finally got the muslin fixed and finished! Thanks for all your advice, though I haven’t had a chance to reply to hardly any of you, for which I do apologise…
Muslin #3 changes –
- Unpinned the shoulder change, took off the waist stay, and since it seemed to be pulling everything upwards before, I reasoned that it must be too low. I repinned it a little higher and everything seemed to sit nicely and correct those weird problems it threw up before.
- I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again – I detest Rigilene boning! Only someone who hates women could’ve come up with those tiny, needle-like implements of torture. My spiral steel boning for the finished dress arrived and it just feels wonderful.
- No one actually came up with the fix I needed for piece #3’s weird bubble. As it turns out I just needed to flatten the curve a bit below the inset corner. (Before and After are below)
- There’s no way I’m muslining the skirt. It’d literally take a whole week of sewing time to even approximate the panels on the existing skirt, plus the drape and weight of the muslin fabric is totally different, and it won’t achieve much of anything I won’t learn in the actual skirt attachment anyway. End of story.
- Yes, I know about wearing proper undergarments. I’ve been wearing the bra I intend to wear on the day all along (though I got sharpie on it during my muslin marking process so I need to buy another copy of it, boo.). I was not being serious about the push up bra.
So with the muslin done, on with the dress itself!! Hurrah!
First step was to lay the pattern pieces onto the wrong side of my flannel underlining, fuzzy side down (I’d been transferring all my changes onto them and I prefer paper with no seam allowances over muslin with allowances). Once pinned in place, I then chalked the seam lines, waist, centre back and fronts, and the two notches onto it. Then I cut out the pieces with eyeballed seam allowances (when you’re dealing with seamlines, the size of the allowances are largely unimportant).
Next I laid the flannel pieces onto the wrong side of the satin, pinning only in the seam allowances because all the pin holes show on this fabric.
Then, using silk basting thread and a tiny, sharp needle, I basted along the seamlines, simultaneously holding the underlining and satin together as well as marking out my seam lines exactly (I learned in my PR Underlining class to baste 3/8” from the edge, but in this case I opted to go on the seam line and unpick any basting stitches where they show through). Basting threads are left unknotted, and you never, ever turn the corner (ie: keep thread tails at the corners to prevent pulling)!
Only after the pieces were safely together did I cut the satin around the flannel pieces. I’d been saying all along that I’d only cut into the train of the skirt if I had to, and well, as it turns out, I had to. The largest pieces of fabric were the two big peplum rectangles, and neither of my biggest pieces (#2 and #7) would fit onto those. So it was either a case of introducing a seam on each near the strap, or cutting them whole from the train. And I decided I didn’t want the unplanned seaming, especially not near my face, so I took them from the train instead. I’ll need to redraw the hem curve after it’s reattached, but I’m fairly certain I’ve still got at least a foot of train left anyway, so I’m okay with that.
But remember how the original patten had some pieces that were pleated? I wasn’t sure if I’d have enough fabric for all that pleating, and Neighbour Helen thought the thickness of my satin might make me look “uneven”, so I was trying to come up with a way to make some of the pieces contrast a bit with the plain satin. First step was to determine which pieces would be targetted…
…and then I realised that I’ve got quite a bit of netting from the original dress’s illusion neckline, but also from inside the huge peplum pieces, so I made a test of what that looked like overlayed on the satin:
It’s a bit hard to see here since the camera’s flash makes the netted side shinier than it is in real life, but I really liked the look. It makes for a subtle textural difference but without a brash colour change, and it still uses the original garment materials. Win!
And it was pure luck that I had just enough netting to cover the pieces I’d picked out in yellow above, too! So for those pieces I made a sandwich: netting, satin, and the flannel, pinned them together as before, and basted through all three layers before finally cutting off the excess.
So by the end of Sunday I had all my pieces cut out and prepped, ready for assembly. Coming down with an awful cold threw a bit of a spanner in the works (when I get a cold, apparently I get prescribed antibiotics, an inhaler, and codeine cough syrup as a matter of course!), but I was able to proceed with the next steps on my day off, in between stops to lie down, which you’ll hear about on Friday!
Tags: dress, silk, vintage, weddingComment [3]
Yet another bridal bodice muslin
23 July 2010, 13:45I’m no big fan of muslins and fitting tweaks, so the title is really reflecting my impatience at still being in the fitting stage. I want to get on with the fun stuff! But I also really want to get the fit and design perfect here as I can’t really go unpicking the vintage satin (the needle holes remain), so here I am, still soldiering on, though hopefully not for much longer…
Yesterday was my day off so I devoted pretty much the entire day to this dress. Right after breakfast I made up Muslin #2 (not shown because no one was around to photograph me), which incorporated the neckline changes and better-drafted add-on straps. There’s no photos, but essentially, I just needed to pinch some fabric out in three places, which you can see here shaded in orange on my pattern pieces:
So I made those changes to my paper pattern, unpicked pieces 1 and 3 from the muslin, cut new ones out, and reattached them, bringing us to Muslin #3. And I was pretty happy with the fit, apart from a bulge above my right breast which I immediately knew the cause of and fixed it on the paper pattern.
Then, following Bridal Couture‘s advice, I stitched on the boning. On the real thing, I’m using casings attached to the flannel underlining and spiral steel boning, but I had a bunch of nasty Rigelene boning in my stash that I utterly hate that needed using up so I used that here to test the overall boning placement and measure the amounts to order the spiral steel.
After following Bridal Couture’s rough placement guidelines, I made myself a diagram to keep track of all the lengths I need:
So after the initial boning fit I shortened a piece here and lengthened another one, and I’m rather happy, especially about how nicely the basque waist falls now! I then went and bought 3m of continuous steel boning plus a ton of end caps from The Sewing Chest now that I have my required lengths.
The next step was to attach the waist stay just above the waistline (on the outside here for ease of adjustment – it’ll be on the inside in the gown) and just as I finished pinning it on, Neighbour Helen poked her head in to see how it was going, so I recruited her into taking some photos:
I realise it’s a bit bubbly above my right breast (piece #2) and that’s already been noted and fixed. Ditto on the back left strap where it joins the bodice. But it’s also a bit bubbly above my left breast (piece #3) and I don’t quite know how to fix that. Here are the pieces involved:
Adding the boning and waist stay had the effect of raising everything upwards a bit, hence why I had to take out some room at the shoulders and why this issue with Piece 3 only came up now. I’m going to see if moving the waist stay up a smidge takes care of the breast and shoulder issues, as that’d be easier than fixing everything individually. Or maybe I just need to try this bodice with a push-up bra!
Seam Ripper vs The Vintage Gown
So as I’ve been toiling away at my toile (see what I did there?), I’ve had to also keep the momentum going with regards to Granny’s gown, now that it’s been properly documented. On Sunday I spent 5+ hours just sat on the couch with a seam ripper, which killed my forearm muscles but resulted in my finishing nearly all of the bodice, waist, and peplum seams. The few bits leftover I finished up yesterday afternoon after muslin fatigue settled in.
The great news is, there’s a TON of fabric there, so I might not have to cut into the train at all. And there’s also a bunch of net hidden underneath the peplum and a few other places so I may use some of that in place of pleating to highlight a few of the sections. I mean, look how many pieces I could fit onto just one sleeve!
(these weren’t pinned – just placed on top for my own curiosity!)
And then I set to work trying to press out more of the 60 year old wrinkles and pressed edges, now that my silk organza arrived.
In these photos, the top piece is with pressed with the iron on the Silk setting, and the lower piece is its twin, pressed again on Cotton setting using a silk organza press cloth and (gasp!) a bit of steam. What a difference!! (Honestly, it’s even more apparent in real life than it is in these photos…)
I’ll give these a couple more passes with the hot iron and press cloth, but the wrinkling left here is acceptable to me, especially given the gown’s age. You can’t expect 100% unblemished fabric when you’re working with vintage, nor would I particularly want to erase its history entirely.
It doesn’t look like much here, but these pieces are all stacked as twins, folded over, and layered to fit onto my line. Included are both sleeves, the front and back bodice pieces, the two collar pieces (huge and on the bias! yeeaaaah!), and the two big peplum rectangles (with equally large netting rectangles!).
I’ve also set aside the piping from the waist seam, the vintage, metal-toothed ivory zipper, and the satin loops and covered buttons to be reused.
Next up: Try on the muslin with a push-up bra. Move the waist stay up a smidge and see if the issues resolve. If neither of those work, grudgingly attack that bulging piece 1&3 problem. And probably work on the organza flower factory while picnicking at the moorings cricket outing tomorrow…
Tags: dress, muslin, silk, vintage, weddingComment [11]