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.

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.