Christmas gift for my sister, 2010.

Bad fabric choice.  Note to self, shiny fabric = trouble.

Made from a 1940s pattern.

She loved it.  :)

Blow the trumpets of triumph; the dress is done!  Thanks to LIRR’s drastically reduced service last night (read: poor Lois in a vintage beret and vintage elbow length leather gloves is confused by the deserted LIRR platform and returns home crestfallen), I spent a pleasant evening zigzagging the edge of the hem and sewing on a bias strip.  This afternoon, after an equally pleasant morning of vintage scavanging, I hand sewed the hem and added the snaps and buttons to the midriff.  (This while listening to NPR StoryCorps Podcasts - highly recommended by the way.)

For those of you who don’t know, I started this project in early July and gave myself a six week (August 18th) deadline.  Well…better late than never, eh?

Both sleeves properly sewn on!  Next: Hem.  This will entail finishing the edge, sewing on a bias strip, then whipstitching the hem by hand.

Sometimes things seem to crumble and recreate themselves at their own will.  For some reason, after weeks of reticence, I sat at my machine tonight.  I constructed the two sleeves to my dress, added a bias strip to the cuff, hemmed them, and basted one on.  It looks pretty good.  The next step is to sew it on with a smaller stitch and then do the same for the second sleeve.  Hopefully I’ll finish this dress after all!  

I’ve been lazy lately.  Rather, distracted.  By a few things…  :)  

I played a gig at Mohegan Sun last night, which required a lot of prep.  Now that the gig’s out of the way I can go back to some of my other interests.  A bunch of new items were added to my shop tonight.  I’ve gotten the ball rolling on scheduling my next voice lesson.  (I’m really missing jazz lately! I need it as an antidote to the pop music I’ve been singing recently.  Ick.)  And I *do* intend to wrap up Project Replica soon!  Plus, I’ve had this French film sitting on my dvd player for three weeks.  It’s starting to collect dust.  

Expect new pix of the dress soon.  I *will* have it finished sooooon!  (It’s getting embarrassing how many times I’ve promised that and failed to delivery.  >:-/ )

No small feat either.  Couldn’t find a zipper foot for the machine.  Zipper foot I finally found didn’t exactly cooperate w/the machine’s treads.  Inadvertently got a pleat caught in the zipper seam.  Sigh…  I wish the zipper was perfect.  It’s not.  But, I’ve learned the hard way, ripping out the seams and redoing it will only make it worse - leave little holes, mess up the shape, stuff like that.  Oh well.

Sewing totally exhausts me.  I’m not quite sure why I want to do this.  Unfortunately, my seamstress skills have diminished in their dormant years.  So, when this dress is done (sleeves, hem, major pressing) I’m going to have to start practicing zippers on scrap fabric.  There’s nothing worse than having a whole dress assembled and ruining the zipper.  

Looking forward to putting on a pampering cucumber facial mask then eating ice cream in bed with Frasier.  <3  (Read: dork.)

I’m fully aware that my deadline passed last Wednesday and my dress is not complete.  And I’m ok with this.  I know that there are just a few more evenings’ worth of work before completion.  Tonight I did some zipper prep.  Considering the bulkiness of this particular cotton (made the wrong damn choice…) I added seam binding to the zipper seam so the zipper will be less clumsy.  I could take a picture, but my eyes are drooping right now.  I was going to sew the zipper in then decided that may just be a stupid idea since I am tired.  Tired = shoddy work = mistakes = cranky.  So, it’s off to the shower, then to pack my gym bag for a.m. yoga, then to the sweet land of sleep.

P.S. Loving the windows open at night weather.  So beats the a/c.

P.S. #2 If I can have the dress done in 8 weeks rather than the originally intended 6, I will be very happy.

Pleats are hard!  The bane of my existence!  Please note, they are unpressed in this picture.  My hopes are that they’ll look a lot better once I iron them.  They are meant to  be soft pleats though so I’m not going to do too much ironing…

Realized that I should have put the buttonholes in the midriff *before* attaching it (duh!) just in case I mess them up.  So, I might just sew buttons on and put snaps behind them to eliminate the need for holes.  

The next step (after pressing) is the zipper.  Then sleeves and hem.  Oh, and the buttons.  So exciting!  

Midriff secured to bodice.

Skirt constructed.  (6 panels!)

Pleats pinned then unpinned.  Think I did a shoddy job of pinning them the first time.  Will reattempt on an ironing board.  

After the pleats I’ll have to secure to skirt to the midriff, insert the zipper, attach the sleeves, and hem the skirt and sleeves - probably by hand.  Perhaps a task for my trip to the DMV on Monday?  

Could it be?  Could I really meet my Wednesday deadline on this thing???

Come to my show tomorrow night and ask me questions about Project Replica!

P.S. Sorry - too lazy to take pix tonight.  Not much to see anyway!