Execution of the Plan

I am happy with the dress however it really veered off the plan.

Recall…this is the pattern.

My previous dress made with this pattern.

You just look at this dress
and it wrinkles

I started off thinking this was just going to be as the pattern intended but after cutting out the pattern pieces I decided I wanted a tie for the back.  I knew I was going to back off the piping for this dress and that stayed true to plan.  I also knew that from my prior make, I thought the sleeves were a tad long…just long enough to annoy the crap out of me so those were shortened.  I also wanted to lower the neckline.  Hello cocktail dress…. needs a low neckline.

I constructed the dress with French seams.  I love French seams in theory but they annoy me in execution because it really does mean sewing the dress twice.  I also hand basted the seams first before taking it to the machine so I could stop the slippery charmeuse from slipping and sliding all over the place.  Due to the time crunch I have to admit the basting was NOT pretty but it did its job.

Just the 2 rows of topstitching
and lower on the neck

First bee in the bonnet: I decided I should top stitch with silver metallic thread.  I had some wild idea this would look really cool.  Well, the first row of topstitching along the shoulder seams looked okay.  Sooooo I decided a second row would look better.  It was okay so why not add a third row??  So that’s what I did.  But when I stepped back and looked at the third row, I ….well I have to say I hated it!!  Really hated it and started re-thinking silver topstitching all together.  Out came the third row of topstitching but I just decided to leave the 2 rows remaining and revisit it later.

Notice how high the neck
is in the back.  Also you can kinda
see that there would have been a lot
more topstitching

When trying on the bodice with the lower neckline, I started making changes to the neckline in general.  I thought there was too much fabric in the back of the neck in that it was creeping up my neck.  But time was of the essence so no muslining changes.  When I bound the neckline with bias binding, I made further changes to the shape of the neckline which means that all the silly topstitching has all but disappeared.

Second bee in the bonnet: After piping along the waistline, I decided I needed to bring the silver metallic topstitching down to the waist.  I topstitched above the piping. …and it looked weird so I removed it.  I topstitched under the piping…better but the fabric was sliding and the topstitching was…well…very wavy.  So out it came.

This silly topstitching is eating up the time!!  I had to stop and just finish the puppy so I didn’t go to the party naked!