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...