Monthly Roundup: June 2012

Whew! June was one crazy month! I spent the vast majority of my sewing time working on Bre's wedding dress, which has been really fun. When I needed a break from the labor intensive bridal sewing, I took one with some easy sewing, so I still was fairly productive this month.

I made:
1) Ottobre 03/2008-11 shorts for Logan
2) Simplicity 3503 dress for me
3) Burda Style 10/2010-118A blouse for me
4) RTW Shade tee copy for me
5) Burda Style 10/2011-146 dress for Myra
6) Ottobre 03/2008-11 shorts for Logan
7) Simplicity 8333 dress and veil for Myra's Barbie
8) Kitschy Coo Dolman Top x3 for Logan, Myra & Duncan
9) Kitschy Coo Dolman dress for Myra

That is a surprising total of 12 garments, considering that most of my sewing time and energy was spent working on the wedding dress. I sewed up 13 3/4 yards of (non wedding dress) fabric, but purchased 40 1/2 yards. What?! Fabric.com has a killer sale this month.

The most fun this month was whipping up Dolman Tops with Kitschy Coo and the Dolmaniacs. I made a top for each of my kids, as well as a dress for Myra. These tops are so awesome. They take almost no time to whip up and very little fabric. My kids seriously love them as well. On any given day, at least one of them is being worn. Myra's got the dress on today.

I'll be making more of these.

As for the wedding dress, I've made some seriously great progress. One thing that was really slowing me down was not having a dress form that I could fit the dress on. Bre is both slimmer and more petite than I am, so using my form was totally out of the question. So, we made a duct tape form that I could use for the dress and it was so worth the time and effort. Stitching the lace overlay to the bodice would have been an utter nightmare, but on the dress form it was a breeze and actually went much more smoothly than I thought it would. And if I do say so myself, it looks amazing.

Anyway, here is where we are at the moment. The zipper (hand-picked, of course) is in and the lining is attached at the neckline and slipstitched to the zipper tapes. Next up, insert the sleeves (hand felling the sleeve lining at the armscye), then I'll just have to even up the hem, attach the horsehair and catchstitch it to the skirt underlining, and add some trim lace and buttons and she will be done!! My conservative estimate is 2 more weeks. I'm so excited I can taste it.

Once the dress is finished, I'm going to jump back in to the 2-in-1 Sewalong over at A Fashionable Stitch. I've already sewn up a muslin and made some pattern changes, but I'm not ready to cut my fabric yet. I want to tease out the back fit a little more before I cut, and I'm still debating lining vs. underlining. My fabric has a white background and is semi-sheer, so one or the other or both will have to happen.