Mess o' Muslins

In the first post Emily spied one of the many muslins I've worked on and have subsequently discarded. First I tried a pleated bottom with a dropped waist:

The fit was great. The style...not quite there. So then it was the mermaid silhouette with a whole lot of seam detail:

I felt a bit too much like Babette from Beauty and the Beast so this got put aside too. Perhaps a change to the top? Fewer seams?

Strike three. Some more iterations on these themes were tried and nothing was working. I missed those pleats, too. Then came this version:

The fit was getting there, the silhouette was slim but not overly emphasizing the wrong things, and the top was close to that Amsale one from the post below. My friend N, who has been my own personal Tim Gunn, was also liking it. But it wasn't "The One." In other words, I wasn't crying with bridal delight when wearing it, as one is supposedly expected to do when it IS "The One." But if I were crying, I'd have a convenient, spacious place to stash the tissues in the top, and that's when I realized the problem with this one. Thus #6 was nixed and left me thinking, is 7 really lucky?

It sure was! (Please excuse the quick and rough Photoshop job.) And what a frankenpattern this concoction is. The skirt came from here, the bodice from here, and the back from here.

I guessed on the train and it works. My favorite part of the train is that when it's bustled, it just tucks up under the second pleated tier so I don't have a mass of fabric hanging from my rear end or trailing closely behind me like my dog does when he inevitably wants to go out in a blizzard. I need to tweak the bodice just a bit so that it's cleanly pleated like the JCrew top but otherwise, this one's a go.

I was in NYC last week for some interviews and by some crazy stroke of good luck the company put me up in a hotel in the garment district. Score! There were fabric shops within steps of my door so I had to check them out, including the famed Mood. One of these holes in the wall had beautiful silk taffeta. I talked them down on price and snapped up 8 yards. My sister then dropped by with her serger for me to borrow. So to sum up that trip, I don't know if I got the job but I left with wedding dress fabric and the nifty serger - a prosperous trip one way or the other!