Day Gown Progress

My pattern arrived last week for the 1861 Dress Bodice from Truly Victorian. I do have to say that I have worked with several of their patterns before and have never been dissapointed. Bodices for some reason are my cryptonite though. This is generally for two reasons: one I have absolutely no patience so I tend to leave out important steps such as mock-ups and two they just scare me for some reason so I end up putting them off for as long as possible which then leaves me rushing to finish.

This pattern however looks to be as easy as they get and in all fairness I have been able to complete a few decent Renaisssance Bodices this past year. So it was time to suck it up. I began by being a good little seamstress and I cut and sewed a mock up complete with the darts and such in order to check the fit of the pattern. Which it turns out is a really good thing since the shoulders were each off by about an inch.

Alas though my camera was nowhere to be found so no pictures of the exciting fitting of the mock up.

I have also decided that stripes are the enemy. I am incredibly OCD about plaids and stripes matching up. This bodice has darts so... stripes in the front are going to be squished. Also in order to have a nice straight stripe pattern in the back, that means the stripes in the front will either not match at the shoulders or be a bit slanted. Luckily I bought a lot of this fabric so I am doing the bodice and if I hate it, I can cut it again and try the stripes in a different way.

Today I am hand sewing the interlining to the fashion fabric. I usually machine baste it, however this was causing the fabric to pucker a little bit and I really don't want to take any risks with it that could end up making it look cruddy. I usually interline with canvas, however I opted for just the cotton on this bodice because I wanted the fabric to flow a little differently. This first go is kind of my expensive mockup, if it doesn't work out then at least I'll be learning.

I am hoping to get a lot of work on this completed this holiday weekend. No pics for this post because they're kind of boring of just fabric sitting pinned. Next one though...