Day 3

Hand Stitching! I have to admit I was a little disappointed with this section of the class. We covered a few different types of stitches including catch stitch, fell stitch, prick stitch and slip stitch. Thing is in my other courses I learned all of these. It was good to practice though. It was also good to have the pros and cons of each discussed again. Here are some shots of muslin samples (the arrows indicate which direction the stitch should be moving). These will seem pretty basic if you've done a lot of sewing.






I'll be doing a lot of fell stitching to tact down my lace. I thought there would be something a little more magical to it all, but there it is. I think this is a common let down with anything you revere and then figure out. I have two friends in Med school right now and for both of them in their first year it was a pretty harsh realization that they weren't going to recieve some kind of magical powers to make them Doctors. I felt the same way when I was told I was an "adult." Whatever that means.

Anyway, I did have a setback today. I realized the beautiful brown charmeuse I bought doesn't fit at all with my vision of the dress. This hit me out of the blue as if I hadn't been looking at, fondling and basking in the sheen of this fabric for 3 days! The skirt needs to be full and a bit stiff. Anyone who's ever touched charmeuse knows that even the heavier versions are slinky and drapey. So, I called up Britex to check on some duchess satin. Turns out they have it in stock. I'm praying the color is right and that I will be able to get enough and that generally all these things will fall into the right place. This of course would totally blow my budget if it weren't for another woman in the class deciding she love the charmeuse and buying it off me. So, no harm, no foul.

I've just about finished the inner corselette for the foundation of the dress. I just need to attach the grograin ribbon at the bottom and its technically good to go. Now all I need to do for the dress is get the fabric, cut it, underline it, attach the corselette, line the dress, hem it complete any last fittings and apply lace over about 40% of the gown. And I have three days. Cool.

Here's a shot of the corselette closure:



The blue stitches are the boning channels. 17 channels in all. I am going to try to mold some cups into the bust for some more shaping tomorrow. This is not unexplored territory, but it is uncharted. It's damn near impossible to find a book about bras/bustiers/anything with cups. So, I'm going to chop up one of my old bras to try to avoid consuming too much time with finagling. More tomorrow.