The Bridesmaid Dresses are Basically Done

With Joe completely overwhelmed with Finals for PT school, I’ve had lots of free time to work on my projects.  I definitely miss him these days, but I decided to make the most of it.  So since I had the majority of this past weekend all to myself, I went ahead and finished the up the bridesmaid dresses.

The last one i had left to do was my sister’s dress with the ruffles.  I forgot to document the removal of the notch/ruched detail, but I started out by removing the entire front section of the bodice and attaching a new, unruched rectangle of fabric.

Here you can see the new panel of fabric sewn into the bodice. That strip of fabric above it will later become the ruffle.

Here you can see that I left the top seam open so that I can sew the first ruffle in.

Here you see me pinning the second ruffle into place

I think this was actually the easiest dress to embellish.  It was the most straight forward and probably took the least time which is why I saved it for last…to prevent myself from running out of steam.  I do still have to take it in at the waste a little, but I’m pretty tired of working on these dresses, so I think I’m going to get that done at work.

And here is Nicole's completed dress.

Oh, but thats not all I did.  After staring at May’s dress for a few days, it was really bugging me that something about it felt off balance. The big abstract bow on top with the full pleated skirt really looked kind of frumpy and like too much was going on.  Plus the other dresses looked much more cohesive than this one.  So after a lot of thought and sketches, I decided to simplify her skirt by removing most of the pleats and taking it in so that it looks more like a pencil skirt, but probably not quite as tight as a pencil skirt – is there a name for that type of silhouette??  I think this was a perfect solution because it allows the bow to be the focal point rather than having they eye distracted by too much busyness.  In my opinion, it definitely looks more sophisticated now.

May's streamlined skirt. Please excuse the horrible quality of this picture.

I also have a new toy that made all these alterations much more professional.  My serge machine!!!  I love this thing, I finally took the time to learn how to use it after it sat in its box in my hallway for several months.  Threading it its super complicated, but once threaded, its really easy to use.