Finished!

I finished the dress - well, except for tacking the bow onto the top. The bow and its knot are sewn onto the dress and the bow is sewn onto the side seam, but I don't want to tack it down until I try the dress on again to be sure that it looks right. The rest of the machine-sewing and hand-sewing are all finished. Yay!

As much as I wanted to add a foundation with boning to the dress, I decided this morning not to do that. It's easy enough do the boning - really, you're just sewing channels 3/8" wide onto a double layer of foundation/corselet fabric wherever you want the bones - but much harder and more time-consuming to fit the foundation/corselet fabric. The fabric has to fit like a glove, with no seam allowance. If I had a basic shell pattern or a dressform and was skilled at draping, I'd be able to construct this thing today... or if I had a couple more days, I could do it. I don't have the extra time.

I'm thrilled with the basic dress. It looks amazing and fits really well - well, it did the last time I tried it on, anyways. I haven't tried it on today so I'm hoping that the bow looks good with the dress and that the whole thing works together like I think it will.

It was important to me to finish the dress today so that I don't have to do anything (aside from tacking the bow onto the dress in four places) tomorrow. Tomorrow is all about relaxing and getting ready for the party. I like to have lots of time to do my hair and nails and stuff and I definitely don't want to be doing a lot of last-minute sewing.

I'll definitely take some pictures for you so that you can see this latest labour of love.