Wedding Dress Progress Part III: Constructing the bodice

Disclaimer: This post is a pure construction post with no pretty pictures. I've tried to put some more detail into the construction of the bodice in the hope that it might help somebody else when making a structured dress. At least I struggled a lot with deciding what to do.

Another month has passed since my last Wedding Dress Progress Update! Two more month to go before everything has to be ready. I'm making good progress with the dress:

The bodice is assembled, voila!

It consists of 5(!) layers:

1. Pleated chiffon shell

2. Silk dupion underlining for the chiffon shell.

3. Cotton batting with sewn-in bra cups.

4. Old bed sheet with boning to which the cotton batting is attached.

5. Silk lining.

It took me a while to decide in which order and which way around to stack layer 3 and 4. So here are a few more details on the bodice assembly.

I hand basted the pleated chiffon to the silk dupion bodice pieces with silk thread and then sewed the bodice pieces together (layer 1 and 2). 

Right side of silk lining (top) and chiffon pleats basted to silk dupion (bottom)

Wrong side of silk lining (top) and chiffon pleats basted to silk dupion (bottom)

Following the tutorial from sewaholic, I made a cotton batting layer just for the three front pieces (the ones connected by the princess seams). To avoid fabric bulk at the princess seams, you have to cut off the seam allowances and then stitch the side and front panel together on top of twill tape. I bought simple sew-in bra cups from amazon and after a bit of trial and error managed to get a good placement of the cups on the batting. I sewed all the way around the cups with a zig zag stitch to secure them.

Right side of cotton batting with bra cups (top) and bed sheet with boning (bottom)

Wrong side of cotton batting with bra cups (top) and bed sheet with boning (bottom)

Then I constructed the "old bed sheet" bodice which I wanted to use to underline my silk lining. I added the boning to this layer because it was the most stable one. I had to make the princess seams for this (and the silk lining) a bit smaller, because they are on the inside of the bra cups. Next I stitched the cotton batting to the bed sheet layer.

Boning attached to the bed sheet layer.

Close up on bra cups sewn onto cotton batting

I then sewed the bodice a fifth time - this time from silk to make the lining. The assembled silk bodice got attached to the bed sheet layer as well. Now the bed sheet layer was sandwiched between cotton batting and silk. I hand stitched the cup of the silk lining to the bed sheet bodice by stitching in the seam line of the princess seams.

Stitches in the seam line of princess seams to secure lining to bra cups.

Close-up of all layers sewn together.

Construction wise the most challenging part for me was to attach and position the bra cups. The boning was very easy to put in. I was contemplating for a while to add some horse hair braid to stabilise the neckline but decided against it. Because there were already 5 fabric layers at the neck seam line and I didn't want to add more bulk.

I first trimmed the batting.

Finally I stitched all bodice layers at the neckline together. To make sure I had a nice crisp and flat neckline seam, I graded the different layers at the seam during trimming before understitching. And voila here we have a really structured bodice. Despite being stable I do not trust it to not slip down thus I've added ribbon straps to have some security :)

Trimmed and graded seams at neckline seam.

Neatly understitched and trimmed neckline seam.

Understitches on the right side of the neckline seam. Pretty ribbon straps have been attached as well.

Are you still with me? Well done! Then let me tell you what to expect in the next progress post: the assembly of the dress and lining and first hand stitching :)

One question, please: Does the train have to be lined? My lining has a train :O And do you have any experiences with bustles? Any tutorial you can recommend? Thank you.

Two Ms: Mimi and Mabel.

I think I’ve given you enough time to forget about my last version of the Mimi Blouse :) The pattern is from Tilly and the Buttons book “Love at first stitch”.

Fabric: My first version was made from a drapy and soft fabric - it was actually a fabric used by the Oasis retailer to make a blouse. I found out about it on twitter because JessB had the blouse, haha. I always try to get my hands on shop fabric and I actually succeeded without knowing! For my second version I used a liberty copy print cotton lawn. It is a lightweight fabric, but much stiffer than the fabric from version one. I’ve used this fabric before to make a dress at a sewing class and was happy to finally use up these leftovers!

For the collar I used some leftover cotton lawn also from my stash. The buttons come from my button jar as well. So you can say, this blouse cost me almost nothing :) I love it when this happens.

Fitting: The fit was quite good in my first version but I was not 100% happy with it, because the collar was laying not flat. It wasn't that obvious because of the drapy fabric. But you know how it is: when you know it’s there, it bothers you. So back to collar drafting I went and a thorough measuring of the neck curve revealed that my collar curve was longer than the one on the yoke. I can’t remember the exact measurement, but it was something around half an inch. I removed the fullness and after some more fiddling on my dress form was happy with the fit.

I hand stitched the hem on the sleeves.

Construction: Having sewn the blouse before, sewing this one was really fast. I mostly followed Tilly’s instructions. The only change I made was to sew the collar in flat. That means I sewed the collar to the yoke before sewing the side seams. I think it results in a nicer collar because you can press it much better :) and it is easier to pin and sew.

By the way, the skirt I'm wearing is the Colette Mabel Skirt. It is made from a Romaknit Jersey that I bought in Goldhawk Road. It is a bit see through and I can wear it only with similar colored tights or underwear.

Here is the reason why I'm not showing you the skirt in its total glory - I had a big afternoon tea before taking the pictures.

I made the pencil skirt version 3 in size M. The pencil skirt has side seam details and a kick pleat. I'm not sure if I cut the wrong size or if it was because of my fabric, but I had to take out 8 inch from the waistband and then from the top of the side and back seams to make the skirt fit. The skirt is sitting now on my natural waist - I'm not sure if that is the right position because the pattern says mid-rise. But anyhow the skirt felt very loose before and I was afraid it would slide down when stretching over the day.

The skirt was easy to sew otherwise and I sewed it mostly on my overlocker. It was a race against time. I have to stop sewing at 9 pm because the walls in our new flat are so thin. I started cutting the fabric at around 7 pm and then participating in my own little sewing bee. And lost. But would have won, if I wouldn't have fitted the skirt :P

I'm a bit disappointed with the kick pleat because it is only a mock kick pleat. My mum asked me actually if I had forgotten to open the pleat. Nope it is closed - unless I misunderstood the instructions? Any thoughts from your experience with the pattern?

Despite it little quirks the skirt is a favorite of mine and I wear it at least twice during the week. Yeah for basics again :)

A cropped Renfrew Cardigan

I have a lot of high-waist dresses and skirts, but only a handful of knitted cardigans that I can wear with them. I just can't knit that fast, pity. Thus I thought I would sew a cropped cardigan. But I couldn't find a pattern that I liked. I wanted a cropped and tight fitting cardigan. Something that goes with the style of my dresses and skirts.

 

I then accidentally found a post by Andrea from FourSquareWalls. A post where she showed her newest Renfrew mod - a cardigan. An idea was born! I had that pattern but never came around to make it. So I made a normal test Renfrew first (which you will see soon) to asses the fit. The shirt was a bit big on me in my back. Thus I decided to combine the Renfrew and Ladyskater pattern.

The Ladyskater is super fitted on the waist - the style I was opting for. Thus I traced the Ladyskater pattern from waist to under armhole and the part above the armhole is the Renfrew. Sleeves are Renfrew as well. I the shortened the Renfrew waistband a bit - I made it 1" shorter than my waist seam would be and then followed Andreas constructions.

To make the button band I just added 5/8" to the seam allowance of the front bodice paper pattern and on the actual cardigan I just folded it back and topstitched it down. I then attached the neck and waist band. To get neat corners at the waistband and neckband, I sewed the corners together first (right sides together). Then turned the right side out and topstitched the seam allowances down.

 

What do you guess was the most difficult part? The button holes! I really dreaded them because I knew they would either make my cardigan beautiful or super ugly. I guess I hit the middle. I can only recommend to stabilise the button band and parts of the neck and waist band where the buttons go. I didn't and my fabric was stretching. I would also recommend to sew the buttonholes before you sew the neck and waist band to the bodice. Because my sewing machine just didn't want to sew over that seam. It was a really messy job that you luckily can't see because of my big buttons and dark fabric.

I love how the cardigan turned out! He is not perfect yet. I think the sleeves are a bit big and I will make them a bit slimmer for my next version. The length I like :) I like to pull up sleeves so that they cover my nuckles - I always have cold hands.

I've bought already some jersey snaps to try on my next version :) hope they will be easier to put in than the button holes!

I'm almost at the end and I haven't told you about the fabric yet! It is a romaknit fabric that I bought from myfabrics.co.uk It does not have much stretch and is a bit thicker. And just perfect for a tight cardigan. I'm a bit disappointed though because it has started to pile already at my shoulders. At the spot where the strap of a handbag runs over the shoulder. I have worn the cardigan maybe 10 times and would have expected it to last a bit longer. Nonetheless, the piling will not stop me to make another one from the same fabric but in dark grey. I need more basics in my wardrobe.

I'm the proud owner of a cropped cardigan :)

Wedding Dress Progress Part II: Pleating Chiffon and Sewing the Chiffon Skirt

Are you already wondering if I make any progress on my wedding dress?! I've started too and it helps that I have forbidden myself to sew anything else until it is finished. I still have 3 month time, but can feel a bit of pressure already.

Excuse my untidy sewing room and focus on the pinned dress please!

At least the dress is now my mean concern as we have sorted out the restaurant, photographer, bouquet, hair and make-up. It will be a beautiful day and I will be hopefully wearing my dream dress.

Progress so far:

I've sewn the chiffon skirt with mini french seams. Before cutting the chiffon, I sprayed it with starch and ironed it dry. It worked beautifully and made the chiffon crisp. So I had no problems sewing the tiny french seams. Because of the starch the dress has no drape at the moment. I hope it will wash out easily.

(I would recommend you remove the starch spray bottle from the bathroom after you are done, otherwise you might confuse it with hair spray in the morning. But I can attest that starch gives your hair a really good hold - for the whole day.)

I've pleated the center front piece. It took me four tries. The problem was that although the pleats looked ok, the center piece didn't had the right size suggesting that my pleats weren't even. So I tried different methods to mark the pleats:  I tried twice to use tailor tucks to mark the pleats and then I tried with a fabric pen and ruler to draw lines.

a mess of tailor tucks - didn't help.

Both methods should have guarantied accuracy, but still the piece was too small. Chiffon is not the best material to be pleated because it is still slippery even after starch treatment. To stabilise it I fused the thinnest fusible interfacing I had to the chiffon before cutting out and it is now really nice and even.

Left: chiffon stabilised with fusible interfacing. Right: not stabilised. Can you see the size difference?

I've gelatin bathed the silk, gasp, to make it less slippery (I was not sure if I could use starch and other bloggers made good experiences with the gelatin. I can only recommend that you fold your fabric before bathing it because otherwise you have a crumbly mess that you can't entangle when wet because the silk might tear. After drying the silk felt stiff like a board and was a mess of folds. I've managed to iron most of them out and the silk is still in one piece. Now the bad news: I'm not having enough to cut the back panel with the train. That's because initially I didn't want a train and thus bought less. But I'm pretty confident that I will be able to get more in Goldhawk Road (that's where I bought it). Now the question: should I cut into the silk now or wait until I have more?

Silk on the ironing board: Left ironed and right, obviously, not.

Together with a very motivating friend (wink Charlie) I pinned the parts of the dress on my dress form. It looks really nice, especially with the lace mesh flowers and ribbon. I'm thinking about sewing a lace cardigan with the lace you can see.

I've bought horsehair braid, boning and bra cups. Everything will go in the tiny bodice to stabilise it. I'm really scared of sewing these in. Especially because I've never sewn with any of these before. But with the long bank holiday ahead I will hopefully be able to tackle them!

PS: I'm sorry for the bad picture quality, but work in progress means mobile phone photos!

Smart Casual or Girly? A Polka Dot Coco!

Here it is finally. My latest Coco in a Polka Dot Fabric. It is not perfect, but I love it.

 

Pattern: Tilly and the Button Coco Dress. This is already my second version of this pattern and this time I made the dress with a fold-under neckline and three-quarter length sleeves.

I've added again two long darts to take out all this extra fabric that would otherwise be pooling in my swayback.

 

 

 

Fabric: Ponte Jersey Knit that I bought in Goldhawk Road, London. It is slightly textured and unluckily has not much stretch. Do you always test die stretch of your knit before cutting out? I keep forgetting. Because this jersey has hardly any stretch it would have been better to use it as a woven.

 

Fitting: I didn’t do any additional fitting this time (for fitting details of my first version please have a look here).  However, because the fabric is not very stretchy one fitting issue has arisen (or is more pronounced than in my previous version). The shoulder/armhole seam does not hit my shoulder. It causes the drag lines in the sleeves. So for my next version I have to do a broad shoulder adjustment by adding to the front and back shoulder/armhole. Otherwise I would say the fit is spot on :)

Dr. Daniela :)

I love the silhouette of the dress that is so pronounced with this rather stiff fabric. The black polka dots on white background make the dress look very classy. So classy that I decided to wear it for my graduation ceremony which took place in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Thanks to the polka dots my family which was sitting on the upper stalls had me in good view all times.

I've spent some time the last couple of weeks, trying to figure out what kind of cardigans I should wear with my dresses. I have a lot of cropped and knitted ones that don’t go with such an A-line dress. I didn’t want to wear a black cardigan with this dress, as blacks makes me look really pale. But I think this long rose cardigan paired with a bow belt and rose shoes makes the dress look really girly. Which is the style I like :)

Good news: I'm currently spending more time on my wedding dress (I've forbidden myself to sew anything else!). I've taken a couple of pictures of my progress - which is rather slow. There are so many decisions to make and I tend to procrastinate a bit. But I'm back on track and will give you an update in my next post!

Let's fly away Mimi Blouse

Little preamble: 
Me: Shall we go for a walk? We still haven't explored the surrounding area.
He: Yes sure. I will take my camera in case we see some birds, deer...
Out and about.
Me: Can you take a picture of me?
He: Yes sure.
Me: Wait. I have to take off my coat.
He: What??? I can't belive it. Are you taking every opportunity to get photographs for your blog?
Me (broadly smiling): YES!
Does this sound familiar to you?

 

It looks like I'm working my way through Tilly's sewing patterns. Because next on is the Mimi Blouse from Tilly's book "Love at first stitch". But what can I say, I just love Tilly's style (just to warn you, I'm also having the Francoise pattern in my stash and I'm eyeballing the Arielle skirt).

I started to fit the Mimi Blouse last year, but couldn't get the fit on my shoulders right. You can see a photo of the muslin on Claires Blog where I wrote a guest post about Muslins. (It's the "fitting a blouse" photograph near to the end of the post.) I gave up on fitting the blouse. But the thought that I gave up (and got defeated by a piece of clothing) kept nagging on me. Thus I started anew and succeeded :)

Alterations: The biggest change I made was to add 1 1/4" to the yoke at the shoulder to adjust for my square shoulders. Before, the neckline didn't lie flat, but now it is! Adding so much fabric to the shoulders meant that my neckline changed a lot and thus I had to draft a new collar and facing. I also did my usual 5/8 forward shoulder adjustment.

I had the feeling that the sleeve hem looked a bit tight on some photos of the Mimi blouse. Thus I added 3/8" to each sleeve hem tapering to nothing towards the armhole. I also raised the sleeve cap by 3/8" and moved the shoulder point forward 5/8". That's it. These are not a lot of changes for me and I managed to sort them all out in one afternoon.  

Construction: I followed Tilly's instruction, which were brilliant as always. Tilly suggests to sew the side seams first and then to attach the collar. I think for my next version I would prefer to set in the collar flat first and then sew the side seams.

Fabric: It is because of this fabric that I decided to revisit Mimi. It is super soft and drapey and I knew immediately that it is perfect for the blouse. I think it is some viscose polyester. I bought it from a market stall in my new home town for £2.99/m. Guess what convinced me to buy it? The birds, haha. It looked awful on the bolt, so many creases. Ironing helped :) However, it was off-grain. A lot as you can see on the photo below. But that didn't stop me to cut the blouse.

Off grain fabric.

Do I like it? I love the blouse, it looks so playful and feels so nice on the skin. I was planning to wear it with my Delphine skirt (version 1 and 2) like Tilly does in her book. But unfortunately due to my sway back, there is a massive fabric balloon on my back. It just doesn't look pretty, sniff. But I had a rummage through my pattern stash and found the Mabel Skirt pattern from Colette patterns. I'm planning for ages to make that skirt. The time has come :) Mabel is a tight fitting jersey skirt and I think will look lovely with Tilly's blouse - if the blouse is not tucked in - that's how I plan to wear it.

The first button is gold-blue because I didn't have enough of the blue ones.

Will I make it again? Ahem, at the time of typing version two is already made up and version three has been cut out. I'm in love :) I hope you are getting not bored, but I try to not show them to you one after the other! Have you ever been so enamored with a pattern that you HAD to make it at least twice - without sewing something else in between???