Zippers, lace problems, and finishing the dress

Friends,

This will be the last blog post about the making of my wedding dress; and it's kind of bumming me out.  I mean, I've wanted to finish this project for some time (mainly, so I can worry about other things), but now that it's done...I'll miss showing you all my progress and crying over my sewing issues.

Sigh.

Well, the show must go on (at least for this one post)!

The dress was just about complete; I needed to install the zipper and address an issue with the lace in the back (let's talk about that in a sec).

I chose an "invisible" zipper in a cream color so the zipper installment wouldn't be so noticeable.

Here I am sewing it into the back of the dress.




Here's a shot of the zipper installed, and you can see part of the detail of the dress is that the bodice does not fully meet up in the back.  Instead, you get a lovely view of the crisscross of the lacing detail.










The zipper didn't come all the way up to the top of the skirt, so I added a hook and eye to fasten it right at the top.  Not my best work, but I'm hoping folks' eyeballs won't linger there.  Plus, the laces/bow will fall down my back and likely cover this up, so it won't be noticeable.








Once the zipper was installed, all that was left to do was neaten up and sew down the lining so that it wouldn't get caught in the zipper. 











And here's the finished product, pressed and ready for action!

Please excuse the crumby lace-up job; I did it myself by wiggling and pulling on the laces--so they appear a LITTLE jacked up.  But, the point of this exercise was to illustrate how the lace ABOVE the bodice in the back is slouching down. 

You can see it in this photo (and I've mentioned this problem in an earlier post--where I feared I might have to revert to straps on this dress to fix the problem).

The lace that sticks up beyond the bodice in back should come up about 4 inches.  Here it is slouched down to about 2 inches, making me very grumbly.

(Pardon the very fuzzy photo.)  This was my attempt to get that darned lace to stand up and salute! 

I used grosgrain ribbon (non-stretchy...the same ribbon I used for the waist stay) to make a boning case (yes, Denise...more PLASTIC boning) right along the outer edge of the lace where it meets the laces.

And I sewed a piece of boning in there, all snug-like.

This is what it looks like from the inside of the dress.  Pretty visible.



And...here's what it looks like from the outside of the dress.  Barely visible!  It helps that the grosgrain ribbon was the exact same color as the dress and the lace.  It just kind of blends right in. 

Plus, I plan to wear my hair half-up/half-down for the wedding so my hair will hide some of this jerry-rigging.





And here's the entire dress on a hanger.  :)

I did try it on to make sure this method would work, and sure enough that lace is standing 4 inches above the bodice of the dress and flat as a board.  BEAUTIFUL.

It was at this point that I realized all the sewing fun was over, and the wedding must begin. 

I pressed the skirt and put this little booger in the wedding dress bag, where I won't see it again until it's time to actually wear it.

Denise asked me at lunch today if it was comfortable, and I said "maybe for an hour."  I'm really not sure, because I've only had it on for a few minutes at a time over the last 3 months.

I decided I'd bring a white pant suit in the car, just in case...

Well, folks.  That's it!  You'll have to wait until after the wedding to see proper photos of me IN the dress.  Thanks for tuning in, and see you in a few weeks!!!

What's left to do:
1)  on the dress?  nothing.  :(
2)  in life?  get married!  :)

Accommodating the bountiful booty and hemming the wedding dress

Dear Readers,

You would think that hemming the skirt of a wedding dress would be one of THE most easy steps involved in sewing an entire dress....aaaaaand, you'd be wrong.

Getting the hem of the dress, when worn, to be parallel to the floor--ALL the way around the skirt takes some work.  You'd think it would be as easy as measuring how long you want the skirt to be, laying the skirt out on the floor, marking that length all the way around the skirt and cutting/hemming. 

But, no. 

I have always needed, when making dress slacks anyway, something called a "full butt adjustment." No, that's not when you reduce your butt volume by diet, exercise, or liposuction. 

The full-butt phenomenon suffered by many a woman, where normal pattern dimensions are merely insufficient in the booty-area, forcing us home sewers to kind of "explode" the rear end of our pants pattern to squeeze a little more fabric into the back of the slacks so they fit properly.

You're probably asking yourself, "What does making pants have to do with skirts?" 

Because I have this full-butt adjustment issue in slacks, it also means that if I don't address the issue when making skirts, I have an uneven hem.  More specifically, when wearing skirts that are the same length all the way around (AKA, all skirts sold in stores) it appears as if my garment is 2 inches too short in the back.  Picture, if you will, a skirt hitting me above the knee in the back and 2 inches below my knee in the front---YIKES!  Seriously, not a good look.  While my problem may not be as severe as this gal's, this is about how I FEEL when I know my hem is all jacked up in back.

In cases where you have odd things about your body you need to work with while making a garment, you'd usually just have your seamstress pop you up on a chair, pin the skirt to the desired length while spinning you about. 

But, I'm my OWN seamstress and do not own an extra pair of hands that operate independently from my body.  Dang.














The solution for a singular seamstress with a mere pair of hands?  This doo-hickey...

Craig was nice enough to pump the bulb for me (because my squeezy-bulb-connection-thingy isn't long enough for me to operate when standing next to this contraption!).  With each squeeze, he sent out plums of white chalk into the air, every time I commanded, "SQUEEZE!"  I simply spun around, and uttered this word until we'd made our way all around the dress.  This ENSURES a hemline that is parallel to the ground...even in the rear!

These doo-hickey's generally come with white chalk, and I had a white-ish dress, so marking the hemline was tricky.  Luckily, the chalk has a matte finish to it, and the dress has a sheen.  So, while I couldn't see the chalk marks all that well, I just had to hit the skirt with the right light and angle to see where the little white matte mark would show up. 

All that was left for me to do was pin the remaining fabric up out of the way, and press the new hem into place with my iron.

Afterward, I trimmed the fabric down to roughly 2.25 inches, folded down and pressed a scant edge, and sewed that down by machine to prepare for hand-hemming the skirt.

Here's a post that describes 5 different methods for hemming a skirt.  I decided on the catch stitch.

Hemmed portion on top.  Pinned portion on bottom.  You can't see the hem stitches, can you?

Ta-da!  The finished product, with the teal colored tulle trimmed to the appropriate length so that it peaks out from under the skirt.









 



What's left to do:

1)  install zipper
2)  reinforce lace sleeve stitches
3)  determine if lace overlay needs boning/stabilizing in the center back
4)  start doing all the things you do when your wedding is 4 weeks away (ack! it's here!!)
5)  don't panic