33. Godet Lace

I spent today working on the lace for the godet. You may remember from way back when I cut it out, that the godet has a curved bottom and thus the finished edge of the lace doesn't naturally line up with the godet's bottom.

When we were measuring the lace in the store, a professional seamstress who makes wedding dresses (among other things) for a living was watching, and she recommended that I put a dart in the lace to get the finished edge to match the godet bottom. She also told me to use tissue paper when sewing the lace, to get it to move smoothly through the feed dogs on my machine. (I've done this before when sewing vinyl - it's a great tip!)

After re-reading the section on lace in Susan Khalje's book, I spent some time studying the lace to see if I could find a way to cut into it that preserved the pattern. I only had a very small left-over piece to experiment with; I tried a couple of different cuts, but couldn't come up with anything that worked.

So I went ahead and tried "brute force" - I just folded the lace over, stitched in a dart, cut away the excess and took a look. When you held it in your hands, you could definitely see the seam. But as soon as I held it up against the wedding dress fabric and stepped back an arm's length, the seam seemed to disappear. So, that's what I did with the godet lace...

Here is a picture that shows the approximate size and location of one of the darts. (I put in one on each side.)

Probably the most difficult step was getting the tissue paper wrapped around the lace and maintaining the location of the stitching line for the dart. Here is a shot at the machine:

Oh, if you are wondering, the answer is - Yes, the more wild and crazy the tissue paper, the better this technique works... ;)

Once the dart has been sewn, the next step is to gather all your courage and cut away the excess lace. I tried to trim very close to the stitching line.

Finally, you peel away the tissue paper...

...and open it out.

The stitching line does show in this picture, but when I hold the godet up to my body, I can't see it in a mirror and my husband can't see it when I stand right in front of him. :)