Finished the outer shell!

Four hours of hard work this morning (and another three hours last night) paid off!  I finished sewing the outer part of the dress this morning.  It’s beyond beautiful.

Unfortunately, B. had to leave for work before I could get him to take a photo of me in the dress, but I’ve put it up on a dress form for now, and will post a photo of the dress on me tonight or tomorrow.

Warning: these are bad photos.  The dress form, for one thing, doesn’t have a strapless bra on, so the fit isn’t very good, and it’s also pretty lumpy, so the dress doesn’t drape smoothly!  I can’t wait until we can get better photos.

Peg and Benita asked why I was putting on the seam binding first.  I asked Sharon about this, and she said you could apply it before or after sewing the seams, but it was a lot easier to apply before sewing.  Applying it earlier also protects the edges during the sewing of the seams, which is helpful for fabrics that are inclined to ravel – handwovens often do.

The only mistake I made in that vein was applying the seam binding to the bottom of the hem – doh!  The hem will be recut when hemmed, so that was wasted effort.  Still, it does keep the edges from raveling.

I am SO incredibly psyched about all this.  All these hours and hours of weaving, and now it’s finally coming together!  I’m amazed at how fast the sewing is going, especially compared to the weaving.  There is a great deal of sewing left to be done, of course – this is just the beginning!  But compared to the 70-80 hours I spent weaving the dress fabric, it seems like a snap.