Time to Dance ;)

The dress is done!  Well, except one small step.  I need to make button holes on the back of the bodice so it can lace up.  I need to get a new buttonhole foot for my sewing machine - I can't find mine.

The first step was cutting out the fabric.  I used the pieces from the muslin mock up as my pattern pieces.  Since the green lawn is SO thin, having the muslin helped with cutting since it gave some weight to the fabric as it was cut.  It was also faster since I didn't have to trace like I do with a paper pattern - I could just pin it down and cut.

I decided to line the bodice to add some weight and make the edges look better.  By placing the right sides of the fabric and lining together, sewing the seam, and then turning the fabric right side out, you instantly make a nice, clean edge to the garment.  Unfortunately, I missed parts of the bottom of the bodice, so I had to adjust and use bias tape to enclose the bottom.  It worked on the top though!

Overall I did pretty darn well with the finishing on this dress, which is one of the areas I really need practice on.  The one big exception was the bottom of the bodice - when I enclosed it in bias tape, this one little area wasn't quite long enough to catch, so I had to sew the raw edge down.  The lines of stitching aren't very pretty, but luckily they're only visible right up close.  A few feet away, and it doesn't look so bad.

The skirt was fun.  I cut out about 30 inches of width from the mock up because it was SO much to fit into the waistband.  I then put it up on the dress dummy so I could set the pleats the way I wanted them.

Here you can see the pleats in the back.  It took me probably an hour to do the pleats since I would set them one way, then decided I wanted more fullness in a different area of the skirt.  Once the pleats were set, I hand sewed them into place before I added the waistband.

Hemming the skirt was another challenge, but it was made much, much easier by having the dummy.  Since the dummy is set to my height and I had the hoop on the dummy, I was able to simply pin up the extra fabric so the hem fell where I wanted it to.  I then took the skirt off, basted (long stitch, easy to remove) the fabric in place so I could cut off the excess, and then removed the basting stitches to make a skinny hem on the bottom.  I may go back and put some bias tape on the hem just to give it some more weight, but it's sturdy and durable as-is.

Here's the finished product!  I've tried it on, and it all works pretty well.  Once I get the buttonholes set in the back, it'll be completely done and ready for dancing ;)