Prom dress almost finished

Into the home stretch!

First, I had to adjust the back, where I had added an inch extra width "just in case". Not only did I not need that inch, I had to take the back in by another half inch on both sides.

I sewed a new line of basting where the zipper will go and basted the raw edges together and then cut off an inch and a half on both ends of the back. Unfortunately, this made the tops of the two back pieces no longer line up, because they are not mirror images of each other.

I thought about taking the side that was higher all apart, which would include undoing the understitching and everything. Then I thought I would never get it lined up as well as if I just folded it over so that's what I did and sewed it down with tiny stitches. After I press it carefully, it should be invisible on the outside.

Now you can see how the top edges will line up properly once the zipper is in.

Next I hand basted the upper and lower edges of the bubble skirt, so that I could make the gathers evenly. That went surprisingly quickly.

I pinned the soon-to-be gathered skirt to the skirt lining.

And the gathers were remarkably easy to make too. I may have to consider hand basting all my gathers from now on. The thread is much looser than if it was machine basted and so it is easier to pull.

Here, I've sewn the skirt to the lining around the bottom and given that seam a bit of a press in anticipation of understitching the lining.

Here's the bubble skirt, sewed top and bottom to the shorter, narrower lining. I'm ready to attach the skirt to the midriff and the last step will be putting in the zipper!

Prom dress continues

Nobody panic! That's the lining attached to the bodice!

I wanted to be sure that the whole thing fit, as the lining is narrow in order to make the whole bubble skirt effect. I hand sewed it to the midriff with a loose running stitch so that when I do the fitting, I will be able to tell if I need to let out the back darts or not.
Next, I have to run a loose stitch through the bottom and the top of the silk outer skirt so I can gather it up when I sew it to the lining. I have decided to do that by hand so it will be looser than machine stitching and give me an easier gather. Also, my machine seems to be breaking the upper thread again and if cleaning out the bobbin case doesn't work, it will be easier to work with a hand sewn gathering stitch.

Prom dress progresses

Despite my lack of blogging (and responding to comments), I am here working away! To update the boob thing, I have only got three more radiation treatments to go, and then I am done! They are a walk in the park (or a ride on the bike in my case, as I am biking every day to the hospital for them - 17 kms round trip!) compared to chemo. In fact, I am saying these days, "if I can do chemo, I can do ANYTHING."

I worked on the blue coat for a while, before I got the prom dress fabric.

It could turn out okay, I guess. But it seems the sleeves are, like, a foot longer than they should be. In any event, I won't deal with this until I finish the dresses now.

In the meantime, my niece and I bought some turquoise silk charmeuse for the bubble dress. (In the above photo, it is greener than it really is. The next photo is more accurate.)

Beautiful! And as it is real silk, it is surprisingly easy to work with.

I also worked on making the bodice muslin for the Vogue dress so it more accurately represented the real bodice. It must have eleventeen layers! The midriff is quilted.

And there is draping on the outside. That is going to be a pile of work. In this photo, you can just see a glimpse of the magenta fabric she and her mother bought. So I decided to go with the bubble dress first.

Each bodice piece is only cut out once. Because it is asymmetrical, there is no duplication of the pieces.

And each silk piece is backed by the same piece in lining.


I ironed each and every piece first. I laid the lining piece on the ironing board and then laid the silk piece on top of it. Then I pinned them both to the board so that I would be sure they would lie perfectly flat against each other as I went around them and pinned them together. With a lot of pins. Then I sewed them all together.

The bodice gets an additional layer of lining. Here I am making sure that I am pinning the lining pieces together correctly, so that they will be sewed right when I attach the lining to the bodice, right sides together.

Here I am, making double sure they are sewed correctly, before I get them all sewed together. It's because the lining doesn't have a right and wrong side and because the bodice is asymmetrical that I went to this trouble. And you might note that I cut everything out with pinking shears, to prevent raveling and give a softened edge.

Once I sewed the lining to the bodice, I also understitched the lining to keep it from curling out.

(Extreme close up!) Then I had to turn the bodice right side out and attach the shoulder seams and hand stitch that opening closed.

Here it is, pinned onto my Judy. I added extra width to the back pieces, "just in case". I can trim them easily when I do the fitting and establish where the zipper should go. Next, sew the midriff to the bodice and the skirt to the midriff.

Some muslins

I put the coat on hold so I could get the muslins done.

I am not loving the coat (yet - we'll see) and the fabric walks around a little so I have to use lots of pins when putting pieces together. This photo shows that one side of the seam allowance ended up narrower than the other, even those these pieces were backed with interfacing. This is the under collar.

Even though the pattern (like most) calls for the sleeves to be set-in, I am sewing the sleeves on first around the shoulder and then I will sew up the underarm seam.

This is the stage the coat has been left at - I haven't even done up the underarm seams. The sleeves look awfully long but I think that's because the bodice has an empire waist. The front facings are "self facings", as opposed to separate pieces.

In the meantime, I cut out the bodices on both prom dress patterns. I got this fabric for $3/metre and it feels like it - it is some sort of polyester, I think. But it drapes okay as a stand-in for whatever will be the real thing. For the bubble dress, I am thinking a silk charmeuse.

I've never made a real muslin before so I went to town with the Sharpie! I wrote the pattern piece number on each and did all the markings, whether I'd need them or not for just the muslin. It was kind of fun. I pinned the pieces together wrong side to wrong side so that I would have the seams showing on the right side for fitting this weekend.

This is the one-shoulder model that I am leaning toward, not the least of which because it is a lot less fiddly sewing. It is inter-lined and then lined but it is not as fussy as the Vogue pattern. I cut this one out in the size 14 to give myself room to manoeuver in the fitting.

I stupidly bought the Vogue only up to size 12 and could not return it for a pure exchange, even though I asked very nicely. So we'll have to see in the fitting what work may need to be done. The bodice is also lined but there is, in addition, draping fabric on the outside for a third layer. And the midriff can be made of contrast fabric (like velvet, say) and it is all topstitched with batting and everything. I'm going to get together with my niece this weekend and we'll do fitting and discuss which pattern and fabric.

Belaboring the blue coat, and prom time

Okay, this time, it is taking me so long to blog because the coat was NOT speaking to me. I somehow did not want to be bothered cutting it out. And when I started, it kind of slid around on me and the selvages would not line up and behave and I felt discouraged. So I left it alone for a while and it mocked me from the sewing room every time I went by. So I kept on cutting it out, bit by bit, and now all the blue pieces are done and I even discovered I had enough lining in my stash to completely line it.

I did however, have to make the second shortest view (View B) because the skirt is wide enough that I couldn't overlap the pieces with the fabric that I had. I'm still going to make the pockets on the side seam, not the patch pockets.

In the meantime, I have promised my niece that I will make her prom dress and so today, we went looking for patterns. She had seen some nice dresses on the internet and leaned toward a one-shoulder style (no pun intended). Unfortunately, there were hardly any one-shoulder style patterns out there (in the books that we looked at). In the end, we bought two very different patterns and she is going to talk to her friends and think about which one she would prefer for the prom.

This one is cute and young and because it is short, she may be able to wear it somewhere else, later. We'd make the pink view bodice and band, with the yellow view bubble skirt.

It will take about 2.7 metres of fabric.

This one is much more sophisticated but I still think it wouldn't look too old on her, as long as she didn't make it in black (and she is not wanting black - we looked at some lovely turquoise silk charmeuse).

It will take 3.8 metres of fabric. Both dresses are fully lined so she can choose any fabric and not worry about revealing anything. The Vogue dress is much more structured and the midriff is all top-stitched. Plus it has the effect of two skirts and a small train.

I don't want to influence her one way or the other. This is a once in a lifetime event and she should be happy with her dress without feeling like she "should" choose one sort of style over another. It may even turn out that we will look at more patterns after I make the bodices in a muslin for fitting. This will be the first time I have made a muslin! Patterns generally fit me right out of the envelope so I never bother with a muslin. But sewing for someone else is a different proposition.

Blue Spring Coat

You guys rise to the occasion! The consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of a coat.

I am going to use Butterick B5145 and one of the longer views like C or D (pink or blue), with the regular collar. I will cut out the tabs for the back and sleeves, even if I'm not sure if I will use them yet.

I am not sure how long a skirt I can get out of the fabric I have but I'll try for about knee-length. I am also not sure if I will put more than the three buttons down the front part of the bodice. In a wind, the skirt will fly open if it is not buttoned down. When it's 20 below, that is a big deal. But since this is only a Spring coat, we're not talking 20 velow.

I was hoping to make the cutting easier by folding the fabric in half but when I did that, the selvages didn't match up, even though I carefully folded the fabric along a particular white line. This means I will have to cut each piece out of a single layer of fabric. sigh.

I'm back!

I'm back! It is two weeks now, after the last chemo, and my energy is slowly coming back. And I have the comfort of knowing that I won't be getting zapped again next Friday, as I have been for the last 5 months, every third Friday, so I am feeling even better about that mentally! My DH is out all day Saturday taking a cooking course and after I finished the newspaper and felt at a loose end, I went upstairs and did the ironing. After that, finding myself still in my sewing room, I started looking at patterns and fabric.

I have been day dreaming about my fabrics and patterns, wondering what to do next. I have this blue acrylic fabric that, when I bought it, I thought "jumper".

The photo shows it is not very thick fabric. But I think it is entirely too busy, too "much" for a jumper. So I started thinking about a jacket or even a Spring coat.

But did I want to line it? But did I want an unlined coat? Not really.

Then I was watching "What Not To Wear" and this really short woman was being told that short, fitted jackets would suit her and I remembered the unlined, short, fitted jacket pattern that is really flattering on me. And so why not make a little jacket out of this blue stuff?

So of course, I have 2.5 metres of the stuff and therefore have enough for a skirt too. Would a skirt and jacket be "too much" like the jumper? I could always just wear them separately. Or maybe I should make a lined, Spring coat with one of the patterns I have not used before and make my mistakes (if any) using this stuff from my stash. What do you think?

An experimental, two-sided top

So there I was, staring at everything in my sewing room, wondering what to do. I decided I had to put away some stuff first and packed up some patterns into their envelopes. As I picked up a few pattern pieces (Butterick 4056), I realized they had been left out because I thought I would make a few more easy little tops.

Back in the Fall, I had made three of these little pull-over tops in silk which are great for under any suit jacket. I remembered I had some small pieces of fabric left over from these shirts I made years before I started this blog. In those days, I was using a shirt pattern (McCall's 8053) that fitted very loosely, with long tails that you had to tuck in - way too loose for leaving outside of the pants or skirt. When I got this fabric that resembled silk (but was polyester and so washable with no ironing), I remember the store table had about a dozen beautiful jewel colours and all I got were two - a burnt orange and a pea green. When I went back after realizing how great the fabric was, it was all gone. Boo.

So I went to the stash and found a piece of orange and one of green, not enough to make a top out of each. But I imagined that I could use the front part of the pattern and cut and green side and an orange side and have a "reversible" top!

I found some green thread and some orange and loaded a bobbin with the green and put the orange on the top thread. It's such a simple top, there are only facings around the neck and they were easy.

I hemmed the facings by machine, with the matching thread on the outside (but forgot to take a picture of the hemmed facings).

Here's the top with the two sides stitched together, lying on the ironing board.

And here it is, with the neck facings on. I am going to stitch the hems all by hand, as I did for the silk tops. I haven't tried the top on, under a jacket, but I believe it may work. I hung it on the hanger with the "front" hanging down so you can see the "back" but when I wear it, it should be balanced so the "back" hides beneath the jacket. It's an experiment! Of course, I'm in no position to wear a suit jacket these days but it'll be ready for when I am. Looking at the final picture, I am reminded of the Go Fug Yourself girls: "ooh, shiny!"

The doldrums

Sorry about the dearth of blogging. But thanks for all the kind comments you have been sending lately. They are appreciated! I feel like I just don't have mental energy and what physical energy I do have, I use it to go to the gym to keep myself semi-fit and sane. I do yoga combined with tai-chi and pilates three times a week at the gym. It's an hour of quiet exercise where I don't sweat but I feel good after. But then I am tired a lot and I just come home and read (or nap). I wanted to devise an original jacket for myself during chemo but I don't have the energy for it.

So I finished my little bags and still haven't given them away. Each large bag has a smaller one inside. One is going to my Mum when I see her this weekend. Don't know about the other two!

So I decided to look at ALL the new patterns I have bought over the last few months. And compare them with the fabrics I have in my stash because I'm not going to buy more. I have some shirt fabric of course and could make some of them but I would like to try out a new pattern. Maybe not the pants - those will require effort to fit properly. I have some twill that I could use for an unlined jacket. I have some nice wool for a work outfit. Not sure when I will be going out to work next! Anyway, that's the plan now - I'll pick a pattern and some fabric and just make something easy.