Dress muslin

I woke up this morning feeling much less stressed (amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for you), and immediately dove into the dress muslin.  It took a fair amount of sewing, since I had to put in boning, do a lining, make a casing for elastic in the sleeves, etc.  but I managed to get it done, complete with overskirt, today:

I like it!  It needs significant fitting (it’s waaaaay too big at the waist, for one thing), and I think I will put a little more fullness back into the skirt at the waist, but I like the lines.  It is perhaps a trifle low-cut, but that just means I need to wear some pearls or something similar to balance things out – I have a pearl necklace that my mother gave me, which would probably do nicely.

And, it adds just enough floof to the coat!  Behold:

The coat actually has slightly less floof than it appears to in the photo (the grass is fluffing it out a bit), but the dress gives it just a bit of extra fullness, which I really like.  And I like the lines of the dress.

So, I think we have a winner!!  Now it’s just a question of getting it fitted correctly, and then making a practice dress so I can master couture techniques.  Probably from heavy silk crepe, I think I have a few yards of it lying around.  Then, about six months before the wedding (so in a couple of months), I’ll do the final fitting and sew the actual dress.

I’m approaching the six-yard mark on the silk.  Because I reduced the fullness of the skirt by about 50% in the course of my draconian pattern alterations, it seems likely that I’ll only need about fifteen yards.  So if I weave twenty yards, I  should be able to cut around the worst flaws, so only you and I will know about my weaving woes!