October 15, 2007

dress update

Well, I've gotten my chemise cut out an mostly sewn up. Somehow I didn't cut it out quite right (a fact I didn't realize until I'd sewn it all together with french seams), but it only really affected the back neckline. It should be fine. I still have to finish the neck line and hem it, but I intend to leave that until I get my bodice made just to make sure everything lines up. Speaking of which I made two mock-ups of my bodice today, and I think I've just about got it right. I started with a side lacing costume pattern which I ended up switching to a front lacing pattern simply because it's hard enough to fit a self supporting bodice on yourself anyway without trying to fit the sides while you're still in the bodice. It took a lot of finangling and a lot of "Here, Allen can you pin this here. No, here. Ok, now can you repin it this way." before I got something approaching satisfactory. Even though I had to do a fair bit of retracing I'm glad I went ahead and bought a cheap pattern to work from since it gave me the shape for the back and gave me my basic forms to work with. Eventually maybe I'll be able to draft my own patterns but for now I'll stick to modifying what I have. Tomorrow I'll make one last mock-up to check my latest adjustments and start cutting the dress out of my linen.

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