Titanic Tea Dress - bad photos - Lisa

As I mentioned, I'm wearing this dress to the PEERS dance on April 6th.  I'm also leaving on vacation tomorrow and won't be back until the afternoon of the 6th.  I'm getting off the plane and getting dressed for dancing.  I might be too old for these shenanigans.  Time will tell!

I propped the hat on the dress form but this pictures doesn't do it justice.  There are more pictures below, and better pictures in the prior post.

I made net under-sleeves  and still have modest hopes of adding some lace or ribbon the the ends of them.  But I may be out of time.  I also have to do my taxes, laundry and packing....all before tomorrow.

I love the dress but it was a huge time sink. Partly because my sewing machine was broken for two weeks so I did a lot of it by hand.  Then, it turned out that a lot of the finishing had to be done by hand too.

Here's a tour....   The back is not QUITE done.  I need to press/steam it to get pin marks out and the sash isn't totally sewn down. I really like the little chiffon rosette at top of the back (hides the top of the zipper).  The pretty lace layer that hangs down was originally planned to be tucked into the sash but Robin suggested it look better hanging.  And she is right.

Here is the best view of the hat and another view of the net sleeves.

And finally, the whole thing, from the side.

You can see the big feather on the hat (along with my knitting baskets, paper shredder, a hanging petticoat and my son's math homework).

If I don't get anything else done, this will, at least, be wearable. Again, apologies for the dim any blurry pictures.  Took these at 4am with my phone before I left for work.

Sewing day - Crippling progress - L

Sorry for the bad pun....Robin broke her foot.  Badly.  Like, need a cast and isn't weight bearing...
No dancing for her.
Instead, we worked on our titanic dresses.  This was my last chance to get help with fitting since I'm leaving on vacation on Friday and won't be back until THE DAY I'm wearing the dress for the first time.  Ouch.

Robin needed help to make her layers level. This was made all the more difficult by the fact that I had to stand on one leg and "be level!". Not easy.  And we brainstormed about ideas to jazz up her dress which is just not working for her.  (It's a horrid Mother-of-the-Bride Dress gone dreadfully wrong. )It's possible that her fit problem is related to the slant of her shoulders.  She can't change that, and kimono sleeves have no shoulder seams to adjust.

Robin decided to make my hat so I would have it with me.  She really has a talent for this.  Left on my own, I would have ended up with a gull feather Stonehenge surrounded by origami cranes.  Instead, I have a lovely garden tilted at a rakish angle.
Lisa doesn't understand that a gull feather Stonehenge surrounded by origami cranes would be awesome (in a different environment or for a different purpose than we have here). [really?  I can't imagine where, except in my brain where it does, in fact, seem awesome] My talent is taking a crappy looking decorative hat, shaping it so a human could wear it, and decorating the heck out of it so that not much of the ugliness is left to show. I do like my "rakish angle", though. Somewhat inspired, given the exactly round hat shape I started with and the fact that Lisa DOES have a difficult-to-fit head.  Since we cannot have matching hats, mine will just have to be MORE AWESOME than hers! If I get around to it.....

And we did the final fit on my dress, whereupon I sewed up the remaining machine seams, added a period incorrect zipper and pinned the sash.  Now I have to sew the final hem, tack down the lining inside the bodice, tack the sash in place and decorate.  And by that, I mean any additional tucks and tassels along with the sash ends that hang down the back.  And a little something to hide the zipper since the zip totally shows.

I love the way Lisa has mixed her fabrics.  I love her colors and I love the way she's taken off with this simple pattern and made it her own. When we started, we were worried that we'd be too "twinsy", but there's no way that's gonna happen now.