This weekend saw us heading north up I75 to attend a His & Hers Shower and Engagement party for Wedding Daughter Laura and her fiance Thomas. Thomas' mom, sister and step-sister threw a great party on Saturday, and you can see that they got a little early practice in cake cutting.
It was also the first time the little flower girls tried on their dresses, and it was an almost perfect fit for both.
The littler girl, I'll call her FGZ, didn't need any adjustments, but the other one (FGK) needs to have the same bottom taffeta ruffle added under her lowest tier, as the lining is just a wee bit short. And I just need to finish the cummerbund's, adding the snaps. Right now, they are just pinned. I'll do a proper review tomorrow.
All in all, we had a great time, met lots of Thomas' extended family, and hit all the hot spots in Madisonville.
How about a sneak peak of these cute little flower girl dresses? I think this will be my last post about them until after Saturday when the girls have their first fitting. Truthfully, it had better be the last as well, because there isn't really a lot of places I can do any altering.
In the meantime, I'll be working on the cummerbund which is turning out to be the hardest part. I am simply not happy with the way it's looking, and I can't say I wasn't forewarned, as a reviewer on Pattern Review experienced the same thing. The gathers at the end are simply not enough to hold up the fabric in the middle, resulting in an extremely unsightly droopiness. Ugh! I need to figure out a fix that doesn't involve a lot of ripping out, but I fear that's my destiny. I just don't have any more of this fabric, and don't want to buy more. I tried to take a picture to show you, but pictures don't really convey the whole problem. Ah well, the dresses really turned out well.
I did add a taffeta ruffle under this dress, because the lined portion just seemed too short.
I certainly feel like this flower girl dress project has been hopelessly drawn out, but I really do hope to finish them today. But before I end up with an incredibly long final post, I wanted to share a couple of more thoughts on the construction.
I decided to make the skirt portion first, as you all know from my ramblings on the tiers, mostly because I was waiting on the batiste for the lining I had ordered online to arrive. In the pattern instructions, they have you construct the bodice first and then set aside. With that out of the way, back to the skirt.
When you are making tiers on anything, you want them to be even, and that starts with the stitching line and where you measure it from. You start with the second tier down, and I measured from the raw edge of the waistband to the raw edge of the tier to make sure it was straight, using the placement markings as my initial guideline. For the 3rd tier, I measured from the stitching line of the 2nd one, to the raw edge, as you can see in the picture.
The top of the pic is the hem of the stay or underskirt to which you are attaching the tiers or ruffles. I have already hemmed it so I didn't have all those ruffles floating about. I clipped the seam allowance as necessary as you can see, which brings me to my next tip. Don't get clip happy! For one of the tiers, I decided to pre-clip before I started pinning. The result was that I had too many clips and it stretched out too far, resulting in my needing to do a lot of pinning and squooshing it all back together to avoid tucks and puckers.
You can see all my pins here, and it simply resulted in making an already slow sewing process even slower, as I pulled each pin before I got to it. Luckily, I only ended up with one tiny pucker, which, ssshhh, I just left in. Here's a preview of how the tiers are starting to look:
Do you see the sheerness below the bottom tier? I've already decided that I'm going to need to add a row of taffeta behind it, as I think the underskirt/stay is simply too short. I believe the original pattern is designed for the ruffles to be made of a non-sheer fabric that matches the bodice, but we veered away from that. Which leads me to my next point about the bodice. The pattern has you use the same fabric as the stay (here, the taffeta) as the lining for the bodice. For my design that would result in some pretty ugly seam allowances showing through the sheer organza. I basted the organza to the taffeta and treated it as a single fabric and used the cotton batiste as the lining which I think will be far more comfortable on what could be a hot June day. I hand basted, to avoid major slippage and stretching, seen here.
It's kind of hard to see, but the right side shows the organza pinned to the taffeta, and the left side, the basting. My next post should hopefully detail my final technique and construction challenges, and then the reveal. I'm seeing the girls on Saturday, so I'm right on track with this project (laughing nervously about all the other projects yet to be started).
Do you ever need to give yourself a BIG, visible reminder?
Today was time for tiers, and luckily no tears were involved. I wanted to share my technique for hemming what was basically the equivalent of sewing on kleenex. Organza or chiffon, a fabric of any other name would still be as frustrating (with apologies to Shakespeare).
I'm using my hemmer foot, and, while I've used it before, I wanted a refresher so I watched a couple of videos. First up, Bernina has great videos for all there presser feet, and this one was helpful. No search for "how to" videos is done without a stop at You Tube.
I really loved how she ran out of bobbin thread at the end. Don't you just hate that?!
OK, here we go...First, I practiced on scraps, but not too many because I just wanted to get on with it. In the process of sewing the side seams (I used a French seam, and now wish I had done it narrower... too late), and the staystitching, and perhaps just in the cutting process itself, I discovered the bottom was completely uneven. So, I folded it in quarters, made the raw edges at the top even, pinned and checked.
This one isn't too bad, so I left it alone. Several were way off, and I just took the rotary cutter, and carefully evened it up, without obsessing. Then I sprayed the bottom edge pretty liberally with starch, let it soak in a minute, and then pressed. I had pre-washed the fabric, so it's pretty soft and drapey now and the starch gave me just a teeny bit more control of the edge. Then it was time. How about an action shot?
I got better with each one, or at least knew what to expect. It was best to start in the middle where it was on the straight grain. I just folded it over twice, plopped the foot down, and took several stitches. Slowly. As I approached the bias edge, I held a single fold and eased it into the spiral on the foot. That went pretty well. Not surprisingly, it was easiest to feed and maintain when I was at the bias places, and hardest as it went from bias to straight and back again. And those silly seams, you're wondering? Well, I took Claire Kennedy's advice from the video and stopped about an inch before the seam, needle in, pulled the hem from the foot and continued manually until I was just past the seam. Then I just eased it back in like I did at the start.
These examples are from the same hem, just different areas. I didn't do any ripping out or stressing, but just let it all go. I can be a perfectionist, but this time ok is good enough. I did trim off any odd bits like you can see in the not so good example. Once pressed, it looked even better.
I did get even further, attaching two tiers to the inner skirt, but this post is getting kind of long so I think I'll keep y'all in suspense...
I got my wedding invitation in the mail yesterday (for Daughter Laura's wedding). We're tempted to mail the RSVP card with our regrets, but, naaaaahhh, we'll be there, with bell's on. (OK, maybe not bells.) SOOOO, what am I going to wear? Some of my non-sewing friends were wondering about the muslins, so here are the rejects:
On the dress form, the white one doesn't actually look so bad, but trust me, it just isn't right. Sunflower there, well, you can see the gobs of fabric involved in the halter. It's crazy. Here's the one I'm going with, Butterick 5176:
It has the V-neck I love, a full (but not gathered) skirt, and the midriff area that is just waiting for some embellishment. The fit still needs a bit of tweaking, and I haven't decided if I'm going to add the ties. Your thoughts? I'm just not sure I need a big bow which I would definitely tie in back if I use it.
I've also started serious work on the flower girl dresses. These organza tiers are giving me fits. One dress has four tiers and the other has three and post it notes are hopefully going to keep them all organized for me.
Tomorrow, how I'm hemming these babies. Hint: it's not by hand!
If you've read much of this blog, then you know that Daughter Laura is getting married. On June 5, in fact. Of course, we have to be crafty. Some of the craftiness we're paying professionals for, like the alterations on her wedding gown. Laura tried to be crafty with some paper flower decorations, but those have become UFOs and we are now the proud owner of a thousand sheets of purple tissue paper. Two shades of purple. Guess what I'm using for wrapping paper for the next 10+ years. Maybe that can be a party favor. Or not.
Laura found a great deal on gorgeous purple satin dresses at the Limited of all places, so the bridesmaids dresses are RTW and amazingly need no alterations. Or so these girls tell her. I hope that's true, but I've let go of the worrying about it. Especially for the one who said her dress is a little tight, but it will be fine.
You tell by the picture, then, that I'm making the flower girl dresses. Yes, there are 2 flower girls. I'm making view B, which is the 3-tiered pink one in the picture. The base fabric is the lavender/lilac taffeta, and the flowy bit is the flowy organza you see there. I'm going to make the sash pictured on the long dress in the dark purple to tie them in with the bridesmaids. The pattern has the base fabric as a lining in the bodice, but I don't want the seams to show, so I'm treated these 2 as one, and will use a pink cotton batiste to line. Then there is the underskirt to which you attach the tiers to, plus a lining for the skirt, which they make out of the same fabric. Two layers of taffeta in June in Atlanta will be too much... too stiff and too hot, so again with the batiste lining.
I'm doing a test wash and dry right now of the taffeta, as the care instructions say hand wash and line dry, but I'd love for the whole dress to be machine washable, so I'll see how that goes. I ordered the batiste and the extra yard of the organza I'll need only yesterday (originally thought there would only be one flower girl, and we had chosen a different, younger looking pattern), so I can't really get started, but once that all arrives, then it will be all systems go! Deadline for this is April 16 when we head to Tennessee. That's where the little girls live (and fiance Thomas is from) and we'll be attending a party there that weekend. I want to deliver the dresses then.
No problem, right? I hope not. I bought the 2mm rolled hem presser foot today to assist with the hemming of all those tiers. That should be fun. And I think I'm going to do hand-picked zippers. I've never done a zipper by hand, but how hard can it be?
Did I mention I'm making my MOB dress too? I'll let y'all know when I'm officially declared insane! Oh, and Uncle Thomas, no showing this picture to anyone involved with Flower Girl 1 or Flower Girl 2. I want it to be a surprise.
