Apart from a final fitting tomorrow before I sew the zipper in properly, the bridal dress is finally finished! Things has gone really well all in all, but I totally underestimated how difficult and time consuming it is to make a corseted full lace dress. I also had some difficult “lace troubles”. The skirt is fully underlined and it’s hard getting the lace to stay flat on the lining on such large chunks of fabrics. Plus bias cut netting lace grows different than bias cut lining, so getting the two layers on the skirt to stay even is really hard. The lace “pop-upped” in some places. So I had to open several seams and realign the lace.
One lesson that I’ve learned the hard way when working with lace and lining as one layer is that everything should be staystitched from the very beginning. I didn’t do that, and had to pay the price. The ribbon embroidery went better than expected though, it was fussy and time consuming, but thanks to the English detective drama Murder in Midsomer, the time spent hand sewing still flew.
And some cheating confessions. I feel a little bit self conscious about the hem, as it’s more ready-to-wear than couture, but the bride and I nixed the idea of a scalloped hem as it would be too time consuming and fussy. So I did my usual blind hem method, first I serged the edges, then I hemmed using the machine blind hem stitch. I will also admit using a glue stick to secure the edges of the lace to the lining before I serged the two together. The glued bit was cut away, so there is no glue on the actual dress, but I still feel a little embarrassed admitting my working method!
And some random life stuff
I have been so stressed lately that I haven’t had any time or energy for blogging. Things has been both really stressful at work with the Swedish election coming up, and at night all my orders has kept me more than busy. And now I am going away on a job related photo course for a week (though I am glad to take a break from the election, my day job is primarily about covering city hall politics for a local news paper and with the election it’s just insane).
I soo long to start sewing in a more creative way again! We have also decided to hire a cleaning service, that comes to our apartment and do a bi-monthly cleaning. Cleaning has never been a forte in this family and hopefully this solution will make everyday life a little easier. I don’t have any friends who uses it, so I don’t really know what to expect, but I think this is the right step for us to take. And it will free up both time and energy.
