1912 Tea Dress - Robin

Here's a shot of Lisa's 1912 Tea Dress after we got most of it together on our Sewing Bee.  Now on to what I did!

I mad a vest for my boyfriend for the PEERS Titanic Ball.  Here are a few shots. Sadly for me, but not for him, he lost weight between fittings and the vest is now a little too big for him.   Why does that never happen to me???

Back view of the vest.  The front material of polyester brocade raveled like crazy, even though I finished all the edges before I sewed the pieces together.  That's why I decided to topstitch the whole thing, for added strength.  That also meant that when I found out it was too large for him, it was an "Oh, well....." moment.  I'm not taking the topstitching out.

I made an evening head dress out of some leftover sash material (that pesky Silkessence that Lisa and I love to hate) and added some beading, recalling the Oriental influence at the time.  Here it is posed on my Gibson Girl wig, not quite the perfect time period, but close enough for my purposes.

Here's the dress, completed.  I went through several iterations of trim before I settled for "simpler is better". To me, it STILL looks like a bad Mother of the Bride dress.  I liked Lisa's take on the dress much better than mine.

I had my boyfriend try to level the hem, but he had a difficult time, as I am in a cast and had to stand on one leg for him to pin. It took him forever and it was still uneven because I kept hiking my hip to support my weight on one leg.  I'll fix that as soon as I can stand on two legs again!

I added some cheap ribbon and even cheaper flowers that I cut off of fake ones from Michaels.  Lisa bought a bunch of different flowers when they were having a 50% off sale. Yay!

We'll get better pics of both our day outfits at the Titanic luncheon, hats included.
This week is taxes and the hat, neither of which is guaranteed to be finished on time.

All in all, I hated working on this dress.  I found the bodice difficult to fit properly if one has anything over a B cup.  Of course, after finishing, I came across a tutorial on how to fit an "all-in-one bodice".  Too late for me now, but at least I'll know what to do next time....if there ever IS a next time for this pattern.