Dainties

I had a piece of soft, soft Lycra-filled jersey with some grosgrain ribbon that matched it to a moral, and some pretty lace fabric, and a hankering to use the eyelet setter I'd rediscovered when cleaning out a drawer last week. So instead of buying lingerie for a shower I was going to, I decided to throw out the intimidation that has always kept me from making intimates, and came up with this little nightie - and had so much fun doing so!

The top of a simple dress pattern gave some basic dimensions for the bodice, but I altered the front with a split in order to lace it up and made the back bodice one piece by cutting on the fold, taking up what would have otherwise have been the seam allowance with a few cute pintucks (I've been on a pintuck kick recently) at the center back. The Lycra stuff, which is incredibly stretchy - I think it is actually meant as a swimwear fabric, so it stretches in all directions - was a bit of a pain to work with, bunching and rippling instead of feeding through the machine correctly as I sewed it together with the lace, until I caved and started using Scotch tape to stabilize the fabric where I needed to put seams. That worked well, and it ripped neatly apart where the needle punched it, though I ended up with an inordinate number of little sticky strips stuck to my fingers and clothes by the time I was done. But I like that fabric well enough to make it worth it.

I cut out the skirt (a slightly modified rectangle that I eyeballed for size...you know how much of designing is just educated guesswork?) with a rotary cutter to keep the edges super-clean, and it's so fray-resistant that I didn't need to hem or finish the raw edges at all. I didn't even gather the skirt properly (secret: I hate gathering), but pinned it evenly around the bottom edge of the bodice and then fed the wrinkles in at regular intervals as I stitched the two together. Once that was done, I set my serger to a very short stitch length and trimmed and bound that skirt-bodice seam. The serging contains the edges of the lace well enough that they should be quite comfortable and not itchy.

And then all that was left was to bind the top of the bodice (I used a length of vintage acetate binding that I'd pulled from a grab-bag a friend had sent me from her grandmother's de-stashing) and set the eyelets and put in the ribbon for lacing and shoulder straps. Such a gratifying evening project! I don't think I'm going to switch focus off of the gowns anytime in the foreseeable future, but this was a great excursion into previously-unexplored design and sewing territory.

The antique gold eyelets were leftover from a corset order I filled a couple of years ago. I discovered that you can't actually use this kind of eyelet for real corsets; they're too flimsy to bear the stress for that, but they're perfectly suited for this kind of lacing. (I eventually had to go to a leather supply warehouse to get the strong eyelets and anvil set needed for the corset. That kind is not as fun and easy as this kind, which you do with this nifty special set of pliers.)

(P.S. - Making corsets might seem like it would be scarier than making negligees, but it's not. Making corsets is like building with Legos. They're sturdy, and you follow a diagram to put it together, and everything stays put. Working with lace and Lycra and ribbons, on the other hand...that's more like doing fancy French braids on a wiggly toddler with fine hair.)

Moving Pictures

I had a lovely surprise when I checked Facebook this morning - White Dress Media just posted a lovely video chock-full of the gorgeous fun we had at the Atlanta NotWedding a couple of weeks ago. (My hands are even in it for a couple of brief seconds, ironing the dress and fastening Tinika's sash on her...*grin*) I hope you enjoy!


The NotWedding // Atlanta, 2012 from White Dress Media on Vimeo.

The NotWedding Dress Fitting

Friends, it's been a whirlwind over the last few weeks - a fun cyclone of traveling, not sleeping much, and sewing, sewing, sewing. I had the fantastic opportunity to attend the "rehearsal dinner" for the Atlanta NotWedding three weeks ago, and took down with me the then-incomplete gown to do some fitting on Tinika, the gorgeous model who would be wearing it for the event.

Besides looking stunning and being incredibly warm, funny, and down-to-earth,
Tinika is a professional model and is used to people having to be all up in her personal space - 
which is always nice when you're in a tiny bathroom trying to fit a dress skeleton on
someone you just met! We had a blast.

Sarah Esther was in there with us, snapping away with her camera, and so unobtrusive
that I nearly forgot she was even present. That's a great thing in a photographer,
by the way. I highly recommend her.

Tinika had taken careful measurements ahead of time, so there wasn't a lot to be corrected; but as a roommate of mine once said, "The female body is a topographical nightmare" - and there are always in-person adjustments that need to be made, especially for a dress with transparent construction like I was planning. This fine muslin underdress was to be the basis for the overdress that I completed back in Chattanooga over the next couple of weeks, and so I needed it to fit perfectly so that I could make everything else fit to it.

This is the unfinished blouse that goes on top of the underdress; and here is where the fitting proved to be vitally important. Tinika has scoliosis - a curve in her spine that isn't obvious from her measurements, but does impact the symmetry of her back. I was able to alter the blouse so that it wouldn't gape or sit askew when she wears it. 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand...I can't let you go without a sneak peek at how the gown turned out. More on this later! Many many thanks to Sarah Esther Photography for the use of these stellar images.

Working on the NotWedding Dress(es), Part Two

Just sticking my head in here for a second to show you all some of the pretty pretty things sitting around my sewing area...and my living room...and...yeah, these projects have taken over the whole house by this point. It's a good thing that I love looking at lace, linen, and silk!

This is a bit of the dress for the Orlando NotWedding - a pewter dupioni sash (with handmade anemones) against a top of ivory lace overlaid on blush satin.

And this is some of the detail on the Atlanta NotWedding flower girl's dress - tiny pintucks on the bodice and a self-fabric applique on each little sleeve.

 I've been doing TONS of French seam work. It makes a lovely finish, but is rather time consuming to do. If you're not familiar with the technique, it basically involves sewing a seam with the raw edges facing OUT (so they show on the outside of the garment), and then trimming the edges very very close to the seam (as shown below), and then turning it inside-out and pressing the seam line and then sewing it again so that all those raw edges are enclosed. Capisce? Don't worry if it doesn't make any sense...it still makes my brain do somersaults every time I do it.

And then there is the fun of dyeing fabrics. This is for the pink sash belonging to the Atlanta dress. Unfortunately, I measured something incorrectly after the test piece, and the whole yardage of what I was going to use turned out rather brighter than I wanted it. I have a backup plan. This will be what I'm doing last minute before I head down to Atlanta on Wednesday.

Clockwise from left: Big pot of dyeing fabric, bottle of Synthrapol, bag of dye activator (soda ash substitute), pot of fiber-reactive dye powder. This is so much fun to do, especially since you have to stir the dyeing fabric for about 45 minutes straight. I watched a lot of music videos. Taking suggestions for the next time I have a dye job.

...so...be on the lookout for the lovely professional photos of the lovely finished projects in just a few days! I'll keep you posted. Have a wonderful week, friends.

Working on the NotWedding Dress, Part One

I'm working happily away this morning, banging my brain against problems like the pleats for the blouse of the dress. I'm not sure what exactly is going to happen with this. The geometric difficulties I knew would happen are in fact happening, so I need to figure a way to either avoid or incorporate them... 

It was somewhere around this point that I realized I'd burned the bagel I'd put under the broiler.
Burned it very badly.

The skirt, however, is coming along nicely. I used a pattern I had on hand as a shortcut for some basic dimensions as I plotted out the various layers.

Aaaaaaaaand...if you ever speculated that the dressmaker's life is like a Vermeer painting...

...I'm going to have to disabuse you of the notion. Um. This is more what it's like at the moment around the carefully scrubbed dining-room table where I'm working on this particular project.

And that's the honest truth coming from yours truly today! Have a great Tuesday, everyone. Make messes. Turn them into nice things. Listen to good music while you're doing it. I'll leave you with what I've had on repeat all morning - a little live magic for your ears.