I finished the ballgown over the weekend! Now where did I leave off..
First up, the real hoopskirt came in so I was able to switch out my stand-in for the real one…. it came just in time, they are shaped differently so that helped me gauge the gathering in the seams, and pinning the hem,
Getting the two skirts put together and then pleated was a nightmare. It took me all Saturday morning.
I forgot to mention, for the overskirt panels, I skipped using one of the pattern pieces as I originally planned to, and instead just cut big rectangles. The ones for the front are shorter and get longer as they go around back.
Anyway, once I finally had everything put together and the skirts sewn onto the bodice, I started gathering the seams. I just did a running stitch by hand up each seam, tieing it off at the place I wanted it, sorted the gathers how I wanted them, pinned them down and went over it with the machine.
That’s where I left off on Saturday.
Sunday! I finished the other shoulder piece, got the straps made, hemmed the skirt, got the zipper in. All the super basic finishing stuff. I decided not to finish the edges of the gold mesh… it would have been a nightmare to try to do that and it’s really not going to go anywhere anyway.
I thought I had enough yellow roses left in my stash to put one at the end of each seam – but I was one short. Arrrrgh. And they weren’t really the right yellow tone, anyway. So Sunday morning I quickly made 8 yellow satin roses out of the scraps.
After I got them all sewn on, did some of the other basic things I mentioned above, made a little jewel piece for the center front… and all finished yaaaaaaaay
I tacked the shoulder pieces to the shoulder straps to keep them standing up and not looking droopy.
I was on track to finish EVERYTHING last night… I finished the ballgown and pulled out the blue dress to put the finishing touches on it. Unfortunately I discovered my zipper was not long enough. So Chase is picking one up for me at lunch today, and I’ll be trying to figure out the hem, because it was giving me fits last night. So tonight I’m hoping to be totally done. Fingers crossed. Play is this weekend!