I’m not 100% done… still have one very important thing to finish and one thing i want to do if I have time… but I have finished the dress and the bags and the magnets and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
So of course I sewed alllll last week. I was honestly feeling a bit frantic.
Here’s the top as of last Tuesday.
I decided to follow the optional step of adding boning to the lining layer, because I’d just gotten a new shipment of boning so might as well put it to use. I know some people may find it uncomfortable, but it does always help my posture.
So after I got the bra segment assembled, I got it basted in and tried it on the bra was way too big and gaping at the center front. I re-positioned it, took it up a bit on the sides, and also took up the shoulder straps. (I pretty much have to shorten shoulder straps in any pattern I use, I apparently have small shoulders? LOL)
So Friday night I got it the point of pinning the lining in and it just wasn’t matching up, it wasn’t making sense. I was pulling my hair out.
Saturday morning I was looking at it and was like, it just doesn’t look right.
I stared at the pics on the pattern envelope and realized, I have this damn bra section sewn on wrong. I had it sewn onto the underband/strap, when it’s supposed to be one seam lower, attached to the underbust, so the underband/strap sits on top of it. Duh, that’s why the edges of the strap are finished! And no wonder the bra was too big and gaping, because it was like an inch and half too “forward” all the way around!
And this was the problem I had with the mockup too. All because I read too fast, went back and and re-read the instructions and yep, I just totally misunderstood.
So since I’d already taken the bra “up” and trimmed what I though was excess, I decided it was best to remake the entire section so it was the proper size.
Recut everything, outer fabric, interlining, lining, pleated section, got everything reassembled. It took all Saturday afternoon but in the end I was glad I did it.
One problem I ran into was the knit I used for the pleated section was just SO thick at that seam where it connects to the lower part of the bra that it just always looked “chunky” and didn’t lay completely flat and neat, no matter what I did. Had this problem with both the earlier version and later version. Thankfully I had just bought a new bra and removed the foam cups from it – so I took those cups and tacked them in between the outer fabric and lining layer. That extra layer of shaping plus pressing the seam down instead of open finally helped them lay flat.
Now with the bra basted into the correct spot, it fit beautifully. No more weirdness.
I started to get the lining pinned in – again, I’d originally been trying to match it up to the underband/strap seam, so no wonder it didn’t work. But it still wasn’t matching up at the back either. So by that point it was late saturday night, so I called it and decided to come back to it fresh Sunday morning.
Sunday I got into the sewing room early because I’d been thinking about alll night. And with a fresh mind I realized, I had the damn strap attached wrong at the back LMAO I had the wrong side sewn down. So I fixed that and now, wow, the lining fit perfectly.
The lining absolutely was the most difficult part of the pattern, as the instructions warned. I basted it all in first in a different coloured thread so I could follow my basting line when sewing it on the machine. It still took several tries of flipping it right side, fixing, flipping it right side, fixing, etc etc etc. Especially around the straps. But finally got it done, got the insides notched and cleaned up and at last the top was done.
Now onto the skirt – I didn’t use the skirt pattern pieces here, because I wanted to maintain the line of the design along the bottom and the pattern pieces were curved. So I instead just cut 2 big rectangles, one for the front and one for the back, and cut the back piece in half to add a seam and area for the zipper. Got the pockets added in and the pieces sewn together and top edge gathered.
Here’s the skirt all pinned in.
Got the skirt sewn on, and then put the zipper in. I did skip the lapped zipper, because at that point I was ready to be done without figuring out something else unfamiliar to me! I did the zipper normally and just trimmed down the raw edges of the fabric so they’d stay under the zipper, and whip-stitched the inside of the zipper to the lining to close it up.
I then finished the inside of the lining at waistline to cover up the raw edge of the skirt at the top, and also reinforced the areas where the strap meets the top.
Finally able to try it on (though this was before I finished the lining so it’s just hanging loose in there)
Next up was the hem, and thankfully I could skip the step of letting the fabric hang for a day, because it’d already been hanging for 3 weeks, pleated around my dressform just waiting on its turn LOL
Having the white edge on the fabric was such a nice guide – I folded the hem up once to where that white edge was just on the inside, then machine stitched it down. Flipped it up one more time to hide the raw edge, and finished that by hand last night while I watched the grammys with Chase.
I finished her right around 10:20 last night. Here she is this morning.
I still need to press the hem and she needs an all-over steaming after being manhandled all last night while I was hemming on the couch. But she is done and wearable. WHEW.
Now let’s talk about the disasters.
First I decided to try to dye my zipper a little darker, no big deal, done that plenty of times before. I didn’t have quite the right colours but I did have a poly Sapphire Blue and my zipper was like a powder blue, so I decided if I could just darken it a couple of shades with the Sapphire Blue, it’d at least look more like some of the elements of the fabric design.
So I got my dye pot out, filled it up with just enough water to cover the zipper, so thankfully not a lot, and got it heated up. Once it was heated, I added a splash of dye, tossed the zipper in and let it cook for about 5 minutes. It came out ok, I left the zipper to dry on some paper towels and left the dye pot on the stove (eye turned off of course) to cool down for a few minutes so it’d be easier to dump.
I came back down about a half hour later to a disaster scene. There was dye all over the floor, all over the stove, it had leaked inside the cabinets under the stove.
I grabbed the pot and took it outside and apparently, it had rusted through the bottom, so dye was just slowly leaking out. Thank goodness I didn’t have a lot of water/dye in it since it was just a zipper. And thankfully it was poly dye so it didn’t stain the grout on the kitchen floor. I was able to get everything up with some bleach and a magic eraser, and Chase got the dye cleaned out from under the cook top. What mess though.
Then about 2 hours later, I kinda kicked the end of my fav little ironing board (it’s just a good size for ironing most things without getting the big board out) I didn’t quite step on it, just kinda dragged my foot along the edge stepping over it, but apparently that was enough to crack it right in the middle 🙁
It is an OLD ironing board, so it seems like it was just ready to go. Chase says he can fix it though.
Ok so all that is left now is PACKING yikes I need to make a packing list. Finishing Cath’s wedding shoes — I’m cutting apart some lace fabric and sewing it onto some little fabric slippers. Was thinking of making some new minnie ears with the scraps from the star wars fabric, but will just have to see how my time looks.
Gonna go make a packing list now because it’s on my mind…