Cutting and basting

This is installment 2 of Throwback Thursdays... I am attempting to catch up the blog with all the sewing I've done and somehow missed blogging about, and I figured the best place to start was my wedding dress.  So without further ado...

Trying on the muslin over the petticoat and corselette was a really good feeling.  I finally felt like I really knew what the dress would look like! And it was so fluffy! And not at all what I imagined and everything I imagined. It was pretty great. And of course, I forgot to take a single picture.

So it was time to mark my fitting changes (running and stress had made all of my measurements smaller from the waist up... Not fun. :/) and when that was done, I got to rip the muslin apart, iron all the pieces, cut them down, mark the right sides with washi tape, and then lay them out on a silk sandwich that was 8 yards long. 

The makeup of the sandwich: habotai silk lining on the bottom, silk organza in the middle, and the gorgeous shantung silk on the top layer. I pinned the layers together using superfine, very sharp silk pins, and it took a few attempts, but I finally got all of the muslin pieces on the silk, on grain.  Small victories, and pretty scrap piles! Silk at the front, lining in the middle, organza at the back. I've found so many cool uses for the scraps.  To include the bias mentioned last week for the edge of the corselette... I also made enough for the shoulder straps, hanger straps, and more!

Then came the basting. I pinned pieces together 2 or three at a time, then stitched it all together with orange silk thread, just to make sure everything would lay smoothly and come together properly. Everything stayed pinned in its silk sandwich all put away till I was ready for it, and I went from front to back, adding godets in batches. It took many many hours, but it was a strange sort of calming, if that makes any sense. I just listened to podcasts, and stitched. It was meditative and prayerful and calming, and since the rest of wedding planning was really going crazy, I was so thankful for that. 

Once everything was basted together, it was kind of difficult to imagine turning my sewing machine loose on it.  It was one of those silly things that was half-paralyzing:  I was so close to finishing this dress, without a whole lot of time to spare, and I was TERRIFIED that using my sewing machine on it would somehow ruin it.  So it sat.  For 2 days.  And I turned my attention to other wedding-y things that were demanding, like flowers. And wine choices, and vendors... So I'll leave y'all here till next week.