PS

I am definitely ditching the sleeves. I don't know how exactly they don't work, because they look so perfect in my head. They do not, however, look perfect on my shoulders.

I am toying with the idea of making knitted straps - similar to the straps on the original pattern that inspired me.




I like the idea of having the little extra touch of green, not just the green in the skirt.

Or I may just leave the straps plain white.

Another gown close up

The lace buttoned on to the dress. It actually pulls more taunt when the dress is on my body - this is just it draped on the sewing table.

Last night did a few hand sewn tweaks (those two problem areas which I thought I'd fixed weren't quite as fixed as I thought) and then did the actual dress hem with the horsehair. Took forever and I complained mightily to Justin about how much I hate hems and how dresses with trains have extra long hems which is unfair. I actually took the time to handsew the train in a blind stitch. Justin doesn't realize what a testament this is to my love of him, but other sewers will. I hate to hand stitch hems even more than I hate hems in general. But it looks damn good.

Then I turned up the hem on the lining - I decided not to have the lining go under the drape of the train, but just to have it follow the line of the train down the back of the dress and then stop at floor level. When the train is flipped up, a little bit of the lining will show in the back, as opposed to a tantalizing view of the backs of my ankles. The lining fabric is a darker ivory than the actual dress fabric, but I figure anyone looking close enough to notice is probably a pervert with an unnatural interest in ankles, so I'm not going to worry too much about offending their sensibilities in terms of my ivories matching.

Anyway, I turned up the hem on the lining. Since, as I just mentioned, it will show a tiny bit in the back, I wanted to make sure that I turned the hem in the correct direction, so the seam allowance of the hem didn't show when the train was bustled. I thought really, really hard about which way I needed to turn the hem, how I needed to situate the dress on the ironing board to make sure I turned it properly, etc. Then, with the unfailing instinct that leads me to get on I-95 going the wrong direction after getting off at a rest stop, I turned it the wrong way. Really, I will get off at the Chesapeake House, go to get back on 95, think really hard about which way I need to go and then get on 95 North, even though I'm driving from NYC to Baltimore. I have a horrible sense of direction. This is one reason I like the rest stops on the Jersey Turnpike - you only have one choice about getting back on the highway, so the worst you're going to do is end up in the Cars/Trucks/Buses lane when you meant to get in the one for just Cars. On the other hand, they don't let you pump your own gas, so I still prefer the Maryland rest stops. I only get back on 95 going the wrong way once out of every five or so trips.

So tonight I'll be redoing that hem and pressing it the other way. Fortunately I didn't have the energy to sew it last night, so I don't have to pick the sewing out. If that was the case, the ankle perverts would probably be looking at the seam allowance, as well as being shocked by the non-matching ivories.

Sewing Tweaks are done!

After completion of the major sewing last Thursday (April 15th. on schedule, if you recall), there was some tweaking that needed to be done. There were two spots on the bodice that weren't laying quite right - one on the left side of the scooped neck and one under the right arm. In heavier fabric it probably wouldn't have been noticeable, but the silk is so delicate that every little pucker is obvious. I also realized that the left strap really needed to be half an inch shorter and that I might have sewn the lining down a little too tight, which was contributing to these pucker issues.

I spent one night thinking about these problems and finishing up the knitting. Then I pulled out my lovely handsewing around the lining and made my modifications. I carefully basted and tried the dress on and checked after every single change. I spent a lot of time sitting at the machine in my underwear and the dress's zipper got a workout (on the plus side, it no longer sticks at all!) In the end, all the changes made it just right. I had started to wonder if I was going to have to redo the whole bodice b/c I'd determined that I could not live with these little imperfections and I was more than a little nervous that I wouldn't get rid of them any other way. Fortunately this was not necessary!

Then I spent a night sewing on the buttons around the bottom of the bodice - this is where the lace will attach.

Put another button at the top of the train seams for the train to hook onto (exact details of that still fuzzy).



Last night finished resewing down the lining. And my shoes arrived. We have a weekend of more wedding festivities ahead of us, but after that - hem! I've decided not to block the knitting until I'm down in Maryland since it will just need to be redone then anyway. So after the hem, it'll be done.

I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with my free time. I contemplated doing a knitting project just for fun with no deadline the other night. I got confused and had to start thinking about something else.

I'll try to put up some more pics, but I don't want to show any of the completed dress til after the wedding. You know, so it's a surprise.

April 20th

On this day knitting was officially finished. Measured length, decreased and cast off again. Did a chain stitch crocheted border around the bottom, since instead of now having a nice cast on edge, I now had a bunch of loose stitches on a lifeline. The crocheting let me do extra chain stitches between yarnovers and keep the more closely knit parts close, so overall I think it maintains the beauty of the design and also stabilizes it.

Plus, since I decreased out those extra two repeats of the chart, the top now fits around my rib cage almost perfectly, rather than being too big.

Oh and I don't think I like the look of the sleeves. I may go without. Maybe God was trying to tell me something when that first sleeve went down the drain?

Slicing the skirt

A photo essay.


The damaged Size 13 border:

The non-damaged Size 10 main body:

The Lifeline between them:

The first cut:

After that I rapidly got impatient with unraveling and switched to my big scissors:


This turned out to be a mistake in terms of time spent. I got the bottom hacked off quickly and had no chance to lose my nerve. But it took FOREVER to unravel backwards up to the lifeline. It also took awhile to unravel and reclaim the yarn of the original border and I lost a lot of yarn in short pieces, etc. Since I hate to waste, this was upsetting to me. Plus it probably took 4-6 hours to do all that.

So in terms of "crappiest moments working on the dress" this was a close second to the whole dyeing "oh my god it's blue" day.

Fortunately it looks good now.

April 15th

Keeping you in suspense a bit regarding the great cutting of the knitting. I took some pics, etc, but they're still in the camera, so instead you're getting a post about the finishing of the sewing.

I had set the personal goal that all major sewing be done by April 15th, one month before the wedding. It was also convenient b/c April 15th was a Thursday, right before Justin & I were heading down to Baltimore for more wedding related festivities.

People at my job having been giving me crap about not being a nervous bride, being generally work focused, etc. So I decided to take advantage of their generosity and understanding and give them some neurotic bride behavior and leave work early to finish up the dress. And it worked!

The dress was already in good shape, the main thing that was missing was the train. I was able to draft out the train piece in the silk and sew it in, as well as pulling and resewing (correctly) the train lining, which I had previously just basted in to make sure it looked okay. I noticed that the left bust dart in the lining wasn't sewn properly and was causing some of the lingering fit issues I'd noticed, so I fixed that too. Then did all the hand sewing - sewing down the bodice lining over the bodice/skirt seam, sewing the skirt lining onto the back of the zipper so the inside was cleaner, etc.

I also bought some horsehair braid to stiffen the hem and bought enough pearl buttons to attach the lace and to bustle the train.

All that needs to be done now is to sew on those buttons (can't be done till the lace is 100% done. Again.) and to sew up the hem (can't be done until I have my shoes).

And I bought my shoes yesterday online! They should arrive on Thursday, so I'd say it's 50/50 that the dress might be DONE by the end of this week.

Wouldn't that be weird?

Knitting Redux

So I've alluded to the fact that there are some problems with the bottom of the knitted lace - specifically the part knitted on the Size 13 needles. Heck, I might have gone on at great length, I'm too lazy to go back and reread old blog entries.

This past Saturday Justin had his bachelor party and our apartment was filled with many, many men drinking a lot of whiskey and watching old WWF videos. I took this opportunity to flee to the East Side and spend the night at the apartment of my good friend & minion Jenny Gill, whom this blog knows well. I took the dress with me, figuring it could use some air, since it hasn't left the apartment since it came home as a cone of yarn many, many months ago. I took the dress out of its bag and told Jenny (probably for the 5th time) of the problem with the bottom border and how I was becoming more and more convinced that I was going to have to cut it off. She was skeptical, but once she saw the dress she agreed. The majority of it looks fabulous, the pattern is crisp and generally lovely. The bottom just looks kind of bedraggled and somewhat like it had been mauled repeatedly by Chiana. (Which it has not. She has generally been very well behaved to the dress.) Even when I was knitting it, I knew this part of the dress was very delicate and I talked about the almost frothy quality that it had, something which I, quite frankly, loved. I knew it was delicate, but I had faith in my ability to avoid protruding objects on the wedding day and generally prevent disaster.

Unfortunately dyeing was the downfall of the dress border. If I'd had correctly colored yarn from the start and only ever had to steam block it, I think the border would have made it. But I think any full scale immersion in water would have done it in. The repeated dunkings and agitations that dyeing the dress not once, but twice required, were just too much for the border. The yarnover holes became HUGE and the more tightly knitted "leaves" of the pattern became tiny. The crocheted border now just looked like crap. I would try to describe it some other way, but frankly, words fail me.

So I resolved to unpick the top part where I had bound off and starting knitting again, with size 8 needles. After about 5 minutes of picking at the final knot, I got it free and pulled back the last 3 rows, which included two decrease rows and a row of plain knitting I'd added for stability. The lifelines I'd chosen to leave in - 3 of my original 6-7 turned out to be really, really well chosen on my part. There was one just below those final three rows - made unraveling them and picking up the stitches a snap. There was another where I switched over from the Size 10 to the Size 8 needles. Okay, this one really has served no purpose in terms of knitting, but it's nice b/c it's also where the train ends, so it provides an easy reference point in terms of that. The final one is where I switched over from the Size 13 to the Size 10 needles. When I finish this blog entry, I'm going to go and cut the yarn below this lifeline. I'll then pick up the stitches and do... something. Maybe a crocheted bind off. Maybe something else.

I made this decision Saturday night and now it's Tuesday. I have made some excuses as to why I've put off this cut for 3 days. Some were legitimate - I drank a lot of wine on Saturday night and didn't want to do anything stupid. I also wanted time to do some new knitting at the top and make sure it still looked good. The overall design of the knitted lace piece won't really be changing, but the train will be dropping down to start at my lower back as opposed to my mid/upper back and the train itself will be becoming slightly smaller. I wanted to make sure this looked okay. It does. And I think a smaller train will if anything, be more appropriate to our casual wedding. Plus I still have no clue how to bustle the damn thing.

But it also took me a few days to get used to the idea, at least in my subconscious. Thinking about it consciously for as long as it's taken me to write this blog, I'm starting to get a little nervous. So I'm going to stop typing (ie. procrastinating) and go take the plunge.

The dress will be better for it.


PS I bought some buttons today. If they work with the dress I'll buy some more soon.

PPS The fabric part of the dress is going very well and once I work out some train issues, it'll be just about done. I should still be able to meet, or come very close to my goal of having it done before Justin & I leave town this weekend.