Progress & plans

Firstly, thank you all for your cheery, supportive comments on my 6 month bloggiversary post!

And, to the five lucky winners of my giveaway, just a heads up that your prizes are officially in the mail and on their way to your doorsteps!

Now, on to the sewing talk. It's been a little while since I've shared my progress with you all for my current project. I'm working on the second wedding guest dress I'd planned to make. If you recall, I decided to go with the red/white spotted rayon and vintage McCall 4581.

In case you were wondering about my sketching skillz...I think they speak for themselves.

It all sounded great and I was excited to get started, but when I finally did I was kind of like... meh. Perhaps this project fell victim to my tendency to over-plan things, but somewhere along the line it lost the excitement and just didn't seem right! I forged ahead, telling myself that I'd like it more and more once I saw the dress underway, and started to make a (hopefully) wearable muslin out of some thrifted fabric. I thought I could make the top part of the circle skirt to test the waist measurement on the pattern, in addition to sewing up the bodice, and end up with a cute blouse with a peplum. Something along these lines:

top with peplum - modcloth.com

Well, I had a few issues constructing the bodice, though the fit was actually just right, and by the time I had the thing mostly put together I realized it just wasn't for me! Boo, right? Well, after being disappointed, it was actually a relief to know that I didn't have to force myself to make it! I love the spotted fabric I'm going to use for the final dress and I decided I'd be happy going with a simpler bodice, keeping the circle skirt, and making something a little more laid back and easy to wear.

Here's what my muslin/top ended up looking like:

peplum top/muslin

The left side of the bodice turned out ok, but the right side is all bunchy and weird.

I probably should have traced the stitching line (that's why it's there!) from the pattern onto the cut fabric, but I didn't want to! That ended up making it rather difficult for me when trying to attach the sleeve thingy to the bodice and keeping the little cut-out things the same size/shape on each side. It just wasn't really fun and I wasn't in love with the look anyway.

Since I've thrown out this plan for something simpler, I decided to go with a dress bodice already in my stash, McCall 5845 , which I'll pair with the circle skirt from the vintage pattern. I might even opt to add the bow belt shown.

I've sewn this pattern up once before, pre-blog, and promptly abandoned it once I put in the zipper and realized the dress was too big. Based on that experience, I've got a few adjustments I'm planning to make this time around, but you'll just have to wait and see how it all comes together. Hopefully I'll have it sewn up in time to wear to the wedding - eeek! More details soon.