24. Deconstructing the Muslin

All that work to create a well-fitted muslin version of the dress, and the next step is to take it apart! ;)

See, the idea is that, once you have the muslin fitting exactly the way you want, you turn it into your pattern for the real fabric. Here are the steps I followed:

1. Mark all the seams on the assembled muslin with pen.
2. Take apart the muslin and remove ALL old thread (there's a lot of it!).
3. Baste over all the pen marks with brightly colored thread.
4. Whenever necessary, trim to a 5/8th seam allowance.
5. Overlay the original pattern pieces and make sure to mark all symbols on the muslin pieces.

I spent A LOT of time on this - probably 2, 6-hour days. My logic was that the more careful I was at this stage, the less work I would have to do modifying the real dress. You know, "measure twice, cut once"...

One of the things that I tried to be very careful about was working with the pieces that were supposed to match. For example, there were four pieces cut from the same original pattern piece at the back of the bodice - 2 to be cut in the silk and 2 to be cut in the lining. I paired up all 4 pieces, aligned their seams and then trimmed them together.

Here is a shot of all the bodice pieces.

Here is a close-up of one of the bodice pieces, showing how I labeled it, marked the seams with pen (while it was still assembled), and then stitched over the pen with colored thread. This piece still needs to be trimmed in a couple of places to make all of the seam allowances equal to 5/8ths of an inch.

I am so happy to finally be done with this step!

The next step - cutting the real fabric! I'll probably do the lining first. Then the silk organza I got for the underlining. After marking those pieces, I'll hand sew them onto the silk satin and then cut into the silk. There's still a lot of work ahead before I actually start assembling the real dress...

23. Godet: Fabric & Lace

I cut the godet base fabric first. Why? Well, mostly because it is some of the cheapest and most easily replaceable fabric in this dress. ;)

The first question was, of course, was the fabric grained correctly?

The first answer: not too bad...

Here's the godet pattern on the gold fabric. The straight seam is actually aligned on a fold so that it will open out symmetrically.

The next logical thing to cut was the lace - unfortunately for my nerves, this being a jump from the least expensive and most easily replaceable to the most expensive and least replaceable material in the dress.

The next picture shows the godet pattern laid out on the lace. Right away, you notice a problem. The bottom of the lace has a nicely scalloped, finished edge. The bottom of the godet pattern is rounded and if I were to cut out the pattern exactly, the majority of that nice finishing would be lost.

In a stroke of serendipity, an experienced seamstress happened to be at the store where we bought this lace and noticed this problem when we were measuring it. She recommended the outline of a plan. (There are still a few details that I'm going to have to fill in for myself.) First, she told me to extend the cut down to the edge of the fabric.
Then, somehow (and this is the bit I'm vague on), I am supposed to do a kind of dart in the lace to make the finished edge of the lace line up with the hem of the godet. It's like a dart shape, but of course the extra fabric will be cut away and the resulting raw edges of the lace sewn together.

I know that Susan Khalje talks about this in her wedding dress book, so I'll go back and re-read that section carefully. I can already see one thing that I shouldn't have done - cut the side seam of the lace exactly on top of the side seam of the godet. This limits the extent to which I can fold up the lace along the side. I should have given myself extra width (an inch or two) in the lace along the side of the godet for wiggle room. I'm reasonably certain that I can still make it work (fingers crossed), but I think it would have been easier with that extra width.

22. Time Management Lesson Learned - The Hard Way

Where did all the time go?

It seems like just yesterday I had months before the wedding, and suddenly here it is - the end of January, with the wedding on March 8th - and I haven't even cut out the pieces in the real fabric! :(

Using 20-20 hindsight, I realize that I made a simple mistake. I was estimating the level of urgency based on the number of calendar days between today and the wedding, when what I should have been using was the number of days I actually have available to work on the dress!

It turns out there is a very big difference in those 2 estimates! Most months have somewhere between 30 and 31 days in them, right? Plenty of time... But between a full time job, some volunteer tutoring, household chores and Saturday afternoons rock climbing with my husband and our friends, I typically only have 3 or 4 days available when I can really devote a reasonable chunk of time to working on the dress. So suddenly my 30 day month becomes the equivalent of only 3 days worth of progress! Yikes! :(

I hope I can remember this lesson for other projects in the future. For now, I just have to commit all of my time to the dress. Obviously, this may include letting some of the above slip a bit. I may even have to take a few days of work off in February. Hmmm... Staying home to sew instead of going into work - it'll be rough, but I'll try to find some way to bear up under the strain... ;)