The Dress

We had a very busy week between Thanksgiving, family visiting, meeting our future daughter in law for the first time, and working on the muslin for Alex's dress. Amanda is delightful and we already adore her. She and Josh are perfect for each other.  It was a great week and our Thanksgiving was wonderful.  

Onto the dress!
I traced the pattern and made a muslin.  It was too small. To me my dd doesn't look any larger than she was when I took her measurements a couple of years ago.  Don't assume anything.  She has done a lot of climbing in the last couple of years and she has gained muscle mass and about 10 lbs.  Wider shoulders too.  I decided not to retrace the pattern, so boring and time consuming and altered the larger size and did a tissue fitting, at least of the bodice.  I ended up using a size 10 at the shoulders and upper body and enlarging to a 12 for the waist and a 14 at her low hip.  This is going by her upper bust, waist and hip measurements.  The alterations I made were a 1" fba, a sway back of about an inch and a rounded upper back, and I lowered the princess seam.  I kept a piece of narrow elastic tied at her waist to check the length and it made pinpointing her back issue easy.  I then made a muslin of the bodice and skirt, fitting the bodice and skirt separately before attaching the skirt.  I used the size 12 measurements to enlarge the skirt and didn't recut it.  It was too big as was the bodice at the waist.  Afterwards I realized that while I had lowered  the skirt waist to where her waist is, because we wanted to emphasize it, I forgot that, duh, the waist gets larger if you lower it 5/8".  Even if I had lowered it by folding out the 5/8" below the waist it would have been too big because it was meant to be above the waist, so larger to begin with.  I ended up taking in the waist and the upper hip curve.  She is straighter from waist to hip than Burda drafts the hip.  I also have to move the shoulder seam back a bit.  When she tried it on she found the neckline too high, and this has got to be the only time I've ever found a V neck on Burda to be too high! I pinned it under until she liked it.  I also cut the back V deeper.  The gored skirt is very flattering on her and she was happy.  The biggest issue I have is that she was instructed to bring a good bra.  What she considered her best bra was sorely lacking.  She will be back at spring break with good underwear and shoes!  Anyone know of a good lingerie store in Austin?  She says that she is willing to travel to Dallas or Houston so any suggestion will be greatly appreciated!

The bodice is  princess seamed with a gathered bias overlay and I am concerned that the princess seam won't have the correct placement because the bra wasn't good. Since the upper layer is going to be either chiffon or georgette I don't want to have to rip it.  I am thinking of hand basting the dress to make it easier to alter.  I will also cut wide seam allowances.

I sent for fabric samples from Emmonesock, Alex picked up some samples from Mood, and I just called Banksville Designer fabrics for more samples.  I made Alex's bat mitzvah party dress with fabric from them 17 years ago, long before internet fabric shopping. I wish that they had a commercial website, but if you know what you want they are a great resource for well priced, high quality fabrics.

These were taken before I lowered the neckline front and back.  She wants a 'hint' of cleavage.  There's  twirling going on in the last photo. Skirt perfect for it.  There will be a gathered overlay on the waistband that I left off.  Fitting this was a lot easier than I anticipated, these are pretty basic alterations that were easy to pinpoint.  
I've got some winter sewing for myself before I tackle her dress.  I need to get a roll of tissue paper too before I cut the dress.  Does anyone have a good source?