Summer Vacation Begins

Today was the first day I worked on the dress with two of the kids at home. (The eldest two.) I still got a bit jittery whenever they would go near the dress - "Are your hands clean?" "DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!" - and my heart skipped a beat at one moment when Hugh absent-mindedly picked up a pair of scissors lying near the lace on the table. However, overall it went well, and I was able to get a good chunk of sewing done. It wasn't as focussed as my kid-free day sewing sessions have been, but still productive. The end of phase one of the lace sewing is in sight.

Hours: 4
Task: continue working on side back seam
Entertainment: Persuasion; "Writers and Company" on CBC Radio One; watching the kids play "Super Mario Galaxy 2"

Brad and Karine both phoned independently while I was working on the dress, and listening to Neva talk to her Uncle Brad was entertainment in and of itself.

After consultation with Karine today, I think we're going to change the structure of the dress a bit - we're going to make an interior corset for fit and do a zipper up the back. (Originally we had planned to do a corset on the outside of the back, but now there is some discussion of doing a contrasting-coloured band around the waist, which I just don't think will go with an exterior corset back. I think overall this will be a better solution - the corset can be more functional and less decorative; the zipper will look more polished than a corset back; and it gives us more choices about what to do with the accent band.

I also had Jeffy take a picture of me working on the dress. This is a pretty accurate representation of what the dressmaking has been like for me so far.


Really, if you're going to spend hours and hours hand-sewing lace, isn't this a pretty nice place to do it?

June 25 & 28

Two days I had hoped to spend the full days working on the dress; both days got shortened, for different reasons. Friday I drove everyone in to school, but got home to discover Neva had forgotten her towel and clean underwear to use after their trip to the water park, so I drove that stuff in to her. Between that and doing laundry and making appointments and organizing the household, I didn't get started on the dress until 11:30am. Thankfully, Jeffy picked the kids up from school, which meant I got an extra hour or so of sewing in. Monday I had fewer household tasks to do and so got more accomplished, but still less than I was hoping for. And now school is out for the summer. I hope Neva and Hugh consider "Mommy doing some sewing" as a fun summertime activity.

June 25:
Hours: 4
Task: side back seam
Entertainment: The Fellowship of the Rings: Disc Two; The Two Towers: Disc One

June 28:
Hours: 4
Task: finished one side back seam; began other one
Entertainment: The Two Towers: Disc Two; The Return of the King: Disc One

Distracted

This week, I had hoped to spend all day Wednesday and Friday working on the dress. However, both days I ended up getting sidetracked by other tasks: Wednesday Crystal came over and I helped her hem five karate uniforms; Friday I went to Fabricland to get some fabric to make an infant sling for Kyle and when I got home I did laundry and made phone calls and... well. Just did all of the tiny little things that are required when you run a household of six. So both days it was noon-ish before I sat down to do the dress, which gave me only a couple of hours of working time before I had to go in to pick up the kids from school and daycare. *sigh* Ah well. A few hours is better than no hours, and I definitely did get some things accomplished:

June 16:
Hours: 2.5
Task: Stitching small seams on back two skirt pieces
Entertainment: The Tudors

June 18:
Hours: 2
Task: Working on side back seam - 14" accomplished
Entertainment: The Fellowship of the Ring, Disc One

Usually after a day of sewing, there are little beads all over the place. I do my best to keep them contained, but some of them invariably end up on the table or floor. Apparently today, as Jeffy was picking at the bits of rice left on the table after supper, he inadvertently ate one of the cylindrical beads, thinking it was some rice. This dress is a family affair.

Next week is dentist week at our house, so my first available date for dress sewing will be Friday. My hope is to get all of my errands and tasks done early in the week so I can truly spend the whole day sewing. Fingers crossed!

June 4

(The previous posts here have been about the process of making the dress. My goal at this point is to record more details about the progress of the dress and what gets done each time I sit down to work on it. I hope this part doesn't get too boring.)

Hours: 5
Tasks: hand-stitching right side seam
Entertainment: The Tudors

Kids were at daycare and school. My goal was to finish the Right Side Back seam, which I did. I also decided to start this blog as a record of the work that's going in to the dress.

I have one more day-at-home to work on the dress before I go to Prince George for a few days. The cleaning service will be here, which sometimes makes it tricky to get very much done, but I still hope to get a couple of short seams on the backs of the lace skirt parts done.

Sewing the Lace

After the lace was cut, there was nothing to do but to start sewing. I started with the skirt, since the bodice would have to be quite fitted and I figured I'd start with something that could handle the odd mistake as I got my "lace fingers" trained up.

I started with the centre front skirt, and sewed one of the side front skirts on. The process was long, certainly, but actually quite fun as each bit of the seam is like a puzzle: how can I stitch these two pieces together to make a seamless-looking result?

I laid one piece of lace on top of the other, matching the basting lines for the seam. Then I stitched the two pieces of lace together along the embroidered lace. The top bits of the skirt were match to each other (as much as possible) so they were straightforward, but as the seam continued down, it required more "playing" with the patterns to make a seamless look.

Here's how the seam looks before it's been sewn:


And after:


People who have seen the lace have said how seamless it looks; some even wondered if it was all one piece. This is exactly the look I was hoping for, so it's gratifying to know that it's working. The only down side is that I think it takes about 8 hours to sew each seam, which means that there's quite a lot of work involved. However, it's going to look beautiful and professional, and I'm very happy to make such a special item for Karine and Brad's special day.