CAB Dress - Final Pictures

The Charity Auction Ball (CAB) was a fabulous success thanks to the hard work and stellar planning of some friends! As promised, a shot of me, not the dress form, actually wearing the dress.

I think I mentioned it before but the theme was "Black and White" if you couldn't tell by everyone's swank attire.

And despite my best efforts, I ended up doing a little bit of last minute sewing on the dress the day of the event. Why? Mostly because Victoria's Secret doesn't believe in stocking items for those of us in the first part of the alphabet. So the U-Plunge bra that looked so promising was left unpurchased and forced some ingenuity. I went shopping in my closet instead and ended up sacrificing a bra.

With some fashion tape from L I was almost ready to go. The last thing I did was add a hook and eye to the back of the skirt so that I could hike up the train. This h&e is larger than I wanted but it's all I had in the closet and the billowing fabric covered it up anyway. It got the job done and I was so glad to have it; the Ball was packed with people and the rainy Chicago sidewalks were not conducive to sporting a train!

Lastly, there's been some solid progress on the wedding dress. I'll get to that on Wednesday when I am d.o.n.e. for the quarter. :)

CAB Dress - # Done!

Hip hip hooray! It's done! And here comes the pattern review for Vogue 1030.

Pattern Description: Lined, flared, floor length dress (shaped hemline), close-fitting at bust, has back zipper, neck ruffle and bodice front extending to form neckline drape. Gathered drape is sewn over empire waist seam.

Pattern Sizing: Normal Vogue sizes. I made a size 8, which fit with no adjustments, amazingly.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? Yes, but it took a lot of tweaking and additional engineering to get it that way. More on that below.

Were the instructions easy to follow? Not bad. There were some things that left me puzzled for a few minutes but the dress comes together somewhat logically once you trust the instructions.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?The style is unlike anything I've made before so I knew this would be something different in the construction department. I also have never sewn with chiffon (and I probably won't again for a long time!) so this looked like a good chalenge for a fabric type new to me.

Fabric Used:Silk chiffon for the fashion fabric, from Gorgeous Fabrics and silk georgette for the underlining and lining, from Thai Silks. Both fabrics are really lovely. The chiffon has a great subtle luster to it and the ivory color is almost champagne. The georgette is lucious, no other word for it! However let me say here that I've now learned chiffon is not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of patience to get the machine tension right, to do french seams, and to finish the hems correctly. The georgette wasn't as trying and has the most incredible drape. I'll definitely work with that stuff again whenever a slinky dress is in order.

Pattern Alterations or any design changes you made:YES YES YES. For starters, I think you need to do some defensive sewing to get the pieces to lay "just right" all the time. I tacked the neck ruffle into place so that the back stood up (Hey, I went to school in the South and thus have a strange affection for "popped collars.")

Next, I tacked the front gathers to the underlining in the waist section. Before doing this the dress wasn't hanging in a flattering sense; I think the gathers simply need to be coaxed into place.

Third, the pattern calls for some bias fabric strips to finish the seam when you attach the bodice to the skirt. I don't know why they have you do this when you can just sew the two together like you would any other garment. I also used packaged bias tape to finish the zipper off. I prefer to have the zipper tape under the lining but I don't know how you would do that on this dress given how it's constructed.

Last, I used an invisible zipper though I think the pattern says to use a standard one. Since you have the waist gathers hitting the zipper I thought it would look cleaner (though you have to be careful the zipper doesn't snag the fabric). Other than those items, I followed the pattern through and through!

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?No, I wouldn't sew it again because it is really unique. I would only recommend this to experienced sewers AND those who are willing to work on it for many weekends/evenings. This is by no means a weekend project and I'd be impressed if someone could crank it out in a week!

Conclusion: Truth be told, this is not one of my favorite dresses. I think the dress itself turned out quite well but there's a reason that I haven't sewn this style of dress before: it's just not my bag, baby. On the upside it is incredibly comfortable to wear and it has wonderful movement to it. I'm looking forward to donning it for the ball (pics of that to come) but I now know that flowy chiffon gowns probably won't be filling my closet!

Finally...Well, Almost

So not only has this week been rough because of that calendar shot below, but it's been rather tumultuous on the personal side too. I'll spare you the details, but there's a pretty stellar condo on the line right now and after 7 rounds of seller/buyer (them/us) price negotiations, a positive (but not free) home inspection, and surprisingly encouraging mortgage talks (in case you haven't heard, credit is now tighter than a pair of Spanx) it might just be these two that kill the deal for us.

Or rather, the simple fact that there are two of them and not just one. Damn the dog haters of the world. And for those of you with both a dog and a house (not a condo), I can only imagine how wonderful it is to not have some stranger deciding how many pets you are entitled to owning.

ARGH. Anyway, amongst all of the craziness I turned to some reliable therapy: sewing. The CAB dress is almost done. I had the same issue as Emily did with the empire waist gathers where both pieces were just too long. Not a big deal though; I just reset the gathers and trimmed them up but you can see that they extended about 1.5 inches past the center seam.

I was all ready to put the zipper in when I realized I had no black ones in my stash. In the meantime I did some strategic tacking on the dress to make sure pieces laid correctly, like the neck ruffle and the front gather on the skirt. Pictures to come.

And lastly, I did some major hand stitching here:

Yes, that's right kids, your eyes do not deceive you. I finally basted all of the organza underlining pieces to the taffeta. The wedding dress is officially underway. If this condo thing continues on at this rollercoaster pace I'll likely have the white frock finished in no time!

CAB Dress - #5

There's hope! I took the entire skirt off the bodice and separated all the chiffon overlay pieces last night, then repinned the side seams. Lo and behold, this time they matched up! (Note to self: you're experienced in sewing enough to know that a 2.5" differential in seams is typically not a pattern error, but operator error!) The side edges of the front panels are cut on the bias so you really have to play with the shorter edge of the front piece to get it to match the longer side of the back (and the bias cut is critical here, I've now learned).

I'm anxious to stitch it again and see if it's fixed but my sewing machine is acting up. The bobbin holder is bouncing around occasionally and making a clicking sound. Consequently, the stitching isn't even and I think is partially to blame for the bad seams. Now this happened before and I fished out a stray pin but after taking most of the machine apart the other night, I found no pins. What gives? If anyone else has a Singer Quantum Futura and could help troubleshoot, I'm all ears!

P.S. - you've probably noticed a change to the blog design again. I blame it on the CAB dress frustrations. I needed some creative expression to actually work so I took it out on the blog!

CAB Dress - #4

I'm not happy. But let's start with the good. The top fits, the neck ruffle is fun, and the fabric has a really nice reflective sheen to it, which the camera has picked up (but consequently made everything else seem really dark).

Now the bad: this would make a stunning maternity gown but I am not pregnant. Thus, this makes a stunningly unflattering gown. The front panels that make up the skirt aren't laying correctly and there is a ton of extra fabric at the side seams.

This picture isn't great, but you can probably get an idea as to what I'm talking about. Look closely and you'll see the silhouette of the black crepe that's underneath, which is much slimmer. The chiffon layer just looks bulky, both on the dress form and me. The design picture, on the other hand, has it looking lovely and smoothly falling on the body. Not cool. The dress isn't finished so there's the opportunity to tear it apart and get it right, but only after I have a few motivation-inducing cocktails. This thing is totally testing my patience.

So, for the experienced seamstresses out there, I'm gratefully accepting suggestions as to how to fix this.

CAB Dress - #3 (Or, Why Chiffon Is A Pain)

I got about 2 hours of skirt sewing in today and I'm still not ready to attach it to the bodice. Why? Because chiffon is a pain in the ass, plain and simple. Sure, it's lovely and flowing, and one might even say ethereal. But for all that grace it takes a lot of swearing and pinning, and adjusting, and repeat. Oh, and it requires french seams, which means double the work. Argh. After multiple attempts at pinning, here's what I ended up with when attaching the front skirt panel to the back:

See how the bottom piece (the back) is longer than the top, by a good 2.5 inches? (Thank you blue lines of truth). I have no idea what happened here but the good news is it was the same way on the other side. This dress has a slight train that I was thinking of nixing anyway so it seems to me I now have the perfect reason to do so.

So, there are definite signs of progress albeit little ones. To keep the pipeline full though I'm already starting to think about the next project. I saw this at JCrew today and thought it might be the next thing. Notice the similarities:

It's tough to see in this McCall's pattern picture but I think with some minor tweaks we could have a good knockoff. And, the weather here is supposed to reach *gasp* 50 degrees tomorrow, with sun, so I'm itching for a spring project.

Wedding Dress Wednesday - #3

There is a blissful quiet in my house right now. Namely, because of this:

Charlotte's only been here for about 5 days but she's already earned herself a few nicknames. The first is "little monster," and that probably needs no explanation. She's taken a liking to eating clothes as one of her pasttimes.

The second one is "Pudge" which also needs little explanation if you've seen the pictures of her belly. I'm partial to Pudge because "Hudge & Pudge" has a nice ring to it, particularly when "Hudgins and Charlotte" takes too long to yell out when trying to get them to behave. When did I turn into a mother of two?

Anyway, back to the dress, since it is a Wednesday and all. Last Friday I cut the fabric - everything but the cotton that will make the foundation. Since I can cut that on a little table, and since my hands were killing me after the taffeta, organza, and china silk, I threw in the towel and will do that later. All told it took 8 hours (!) to cut all 42 pieces (!!), despite having my dining table in the living room so it could be fully extended to 10 feet.

There really was no way to lay out more than one piece since I was using genius pattern weights (knives and forks) instead of pinning and the table's only 32" wide. The weights saved time but the tradeoff was doing it one piece after another. I now have to start attaching the underlining (organza) to the taffeta, and that will most certainly have to wait until another nap time happens around here.

Lastly, the CAB dress is coming along though you wouldn't know it from any pictures. The bodice is done, all 48 instruction steps! And now I finally get to start on the skirt, but again, at nap time.

CAB Dress - #2

This will be brief. The bodice for the black and white dress is coming along but I'm learning the construction of this thing is definitely more a marathon than a sprint. I'm also concerned a wee bit about the puffiness of the outer layer of the dress (hard to see in the picture) but I think things will tighten up once the lining goes in.

Also, you'll note a new blog layout (yet again). I'm no C++ or HTML master and I couldn't figure out how to edit some things in the last template. This one: editing gold.

Modeling

Of spreadsheets, not clothes. I'm hanging out in my spreadsheet modeling class and thought I'd post an update on the state of the dresses. There's been a lot of talk about dresses this week, what with the inauguration and all, so why not keep in that theme? Here's why - I have nothing to share.

That's partially true. I started cutting the fabric for the CAB dress and that was no small task. I think between the lining and the fashion fabric there were 20 yards to go through. It took about 5 hours total because, as it turns out, silk chiffon is quite slippery and a pain to cut accurately. The bodice pieces are under construction but are not at any recognizable point so I have no pictures.

And as for the wedding dress - Mom was in town and helped me play around with a few other things. For your sake and mine, I'm not posting any more pics of this thing until I've settled on one to the point that I've cut the fabric. I've cried "wolf" enough! No sense in pretending I've got the muslin right until it's no longer a muslin.

Other things have been progressing more smoothly, however. Check this out:

That's the image for our save the date postcards, which I ordered from Moo. I was really impressed with the quality, which is a nice, thick cardstock postcard printed with a glossy finish. Sure, they took two weeks to get here from London but the price and convenience definitely made it worth the wait. And now, they're off to mailboxes all over.

CAB Dress - #1

I was on high sewing after making some progress on the wedding dress so I decided to keep it going by starting the black and white dress. At first glance the construction in this pattern seems crazy, which is why I felt I needed to make a muslin of at least half of the bodice. And here it is:

The practice fabric I had is actually much thicker than the chiffon I'll be using but in general it worked. And, the flounce around the neck will probably not be nearly as voluminous as it is on this muslin. I ordered some fabric from Thai Silks for both the lining of this dress and the wedding dress so as soon as it arrives I can start on the real deal.

Side note - in an effort to ward off a full bout of "senioritis" and the ensuing sub-optimal academic performance, I've imposed some self limits and will work on/post about the wedding dress on Wednesdays and the B&W dress on Fridays. No class on W and F = no school work period, in my opinion.

Out With The Old

(yet another dress carcass on the cutting table)

and in with the new:

Here's what it took to get there (every one of these patterns was used in some way!):

and in the end, it just took one pattern with some editing - no pleats.

(Vogue 2963)

Clearly there's been some sewing happening around here. I'll spare you the numerous changes I went through and the oodles of things I tried (and obviously didn't like). But the fit on this one is perfect, the non-pleated skirt took about 20 lbs off the thing, and the bodice is surprisingly flattering to my "petite" top. The picture below shows it without the foundation in place so when finished it will be more shapely. Also, the inside piece will be a tad smaller once the seams are in.

So that's it! Now I can move on to cutting the real fabric. But it will have to wait, as I've got another project up next. I've got until March to make a black and white gown for the Black and White Charity Auction Ball. The pattern du jour is here and I'll be using this fabric:

Here's hoping I'm not nearly as indecisive as I was with the wedding dress.