Setback

After nearly finishing the next-to-last motif on the front, I felt something odd in the stitching.  I had been sewing things down with a hand under the silk shantung making up the interior foundation, carefully making sure the shantung wasn’t caught by any of the stitches.  But then I felt a strange semi-catching, as if something were not-quite-caught….so I investigated, and discovered that while the shantung of the foundation had not been caught, the interior lining of the foundation (a layer of sandwashed charmeuse to cover the boning so it wouldn’t show) HAD been caught.  In LOTS of places.

Unfortunately for me, the dress hangs free from the foundation below the bust, so that meant that all the places where it had been caught would need to be clipped free.  Which meant, in turn, clipping out nearly half the meticulous stitches I had spent so long putting in.  I said lots of bad words, believe me!!

So now I have carefully pinned paper across the ENTIRE working surface, between  the outer fabric and the charmeuse lining of the foundation, so this won’t happen again.  And I am starting to identify and restitch all the areas where I had to cut the stitching out.  But I am not a happy camper.   I think it will take a full day just to catch back up to where I was, and at T minus 11 days, that’s really not something I can afford.

On the other hand, there’s nothing I can change about it now, and time spent grumping over it isn’t going to get the job done!  So it’s back to work as soon as I finish this blog entry, meticulously repairing the damage.

AVL has finished my dobby box repairs – another solenoid needed to be replaced, and the software reloaded/updated – and it is on its way back to me.  It should arrive today, so as of tonight I should be able to start weaving the double-happiness ribbon!  It will be nice to be able to do something other than applique lace – after nearly twenty hours of nonstop applique-ing, I’m starting to get tired of all this sewing!

Back to work!  The sooner started, the sooner finished.