Bridesmaids Dress (the real deal)

The only place to get fabric close by is either Joann's fabric or the two walmarts in town. The next closest is a Joann's fabric about an hour away. In an effort to be thorough I took a day trip to the Joann fabric an hour south to look at the fabric there. I managed to find some fabric that was an exact match to the Yale Blue cord that was the sample. However I realized that with the pattern I was hoping to do would mean yards and yards of shiny fabric. So I decided the best bet would be the fabric I saw back at the Joann's at home and thus traveled back without buying any fabric (I did buy some elastic but that's a later post). I picked up the Royal Blue Jersey fabric and a dark blue lining fabric for the mid-rift.


 The main concern I had with my mock-up was the lack of coverage in the bust area. So in order to make this change I decided to enlarge one piece of the pattern. I did this by slicing the pattern down the middle and rotating it and tracing the outside onto another piece of paper.

I realized that I have two pattern pieces that were the exact same shape. One was the bodice the other the lining. The main difference was the markings the bodice had pleats and the lining had darts.


After putting together the bodice and bodice lining, I went onto the mid-rift. The pattern for the mid-rift required a lining and two more pieces one of which was gathered. Since I only intended to gather the front I didn't double up the back as I did in the mock up dress. I made very long ties sewed them together and turned them inside out.


I attached them to the mid-rift as I sewed the sides of it together. Then used a hair tie to keep them out of the way when sewing the rest of the dress together.

Then I had to sew the bodice to the mid-rift. My sewing machine decided at this point it hated the fabric and did not want to sew two layers of it together much less the 5 or so that needed to go together. I had to be very very careful not to catch the ties in the stitching so I used a pin to pin it away from the seam.

 

Next was the skirt. In order to make it a bit more froofy I placed the pieces on the fabric and positioned them so I could use the most fabric possible, keeping the waist the same size.  I used my measuring take to extend the area of the triangles.

I used the lining material to make pockets I made four kidney shaped pieces sewing two to each side of the skirt in the seem (one to each piece on each side). I originally wanted to double it to be more secure but then after have a few 'problems' with my sewing machine I decided it's one day and the pockets will hold with only one layer. 

So I sewed the pockets to the skirt pieces then sewed the skirt pieces together being careful to sew the pockets together as part of the seam.

Then the next step was to sew the skirt to the mid-rift. This also caused problems with my sewing machine since by this time it decided that it no longer needed to sew the fabric together at all. I went very very slowly sometimes just using the turn wheel and not the foot to sew.

After doing this I put in an invisible zipper in the back using the instructions from the package of the zipper. The zipper was causing some concern because it would zip fine except over places where there was an excess of fabric like the seams connecting the bodice to the mid-rift and the mid-rift to the skirt. 

The last part was hemming the end. This was exhausting because I made the bottom wider then the original pattern. I used a blind hem stitch to hem the bottom, this stitch requires the end of the skirt to be basted then folded in such a way that the stitch could just catch bits the skirt and sew mostly on the folded over hem. When I tried the stitch on scrap lining fabric it worked fine. When I went to do it on the skirt, the sewing machine decided the best policy would be to just skip stitches. So after spending lots and lots of time alternating between the presser foot and the manual hand wheel I got around the entire circumference of the skirt with lots of missed stitches.

At this point I went back and hand stitched any stitches that were missed and then looking at the rest of the seems to hand stitch anything that didn't get sew properly.


At this point I thought I was mostly home free. But just in case I packed the remaining fabric and the matching thread. And headed north for my 5 days home with my mom and then the wedding.

After I got home I I found some white shoes to go with the dress. When I went to put them on with the dress I bent over and the zipper split. (I knew it wasn't that strong ) So in a rush my mom took me around to find a way to fasten the back without using a zipper.
I decided to buy some dark blue ribbon for $0.50 that matched the mid-rift. I also got brass colored grommets and the tool to install them. I used the extra fabric I brought with me to make a flap to cover the back. I was able to attach it by using my mom's old sewing machine (which we thought didn't work but I think several years ago I may have mis-threaded it). After about an hour or so of shopping and about half an hour of cutting sewing and grommet placing I had the back of my dress fixed in such a way that no mater what I could close it. I was so happy this happened several days before the wedding at my mom's house instead of at the wedding where I didn't know the area and had other stuff to do.