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.