Venetian: Days 4 and 5

Day 4: finish hand stitching the bodice.

Day 5: an almost finished dress!

Let's start day 5 with a picture of my nearly finished bodice:

almost finished bodice

As you can see, the fabric is nice and smooth over the corset and the fit is actually better than I expected. I changed the boning placement along the edges which gave it a stiffer edge than my last Venetian bodice.

Next, I finished pleating the skirt and stitched it to the bodice:

sewing skirt to bodice

I love this part because it's just like hand binding a quilt. The pleats are evenly arranged and stitched to the very edge of the bodice. I decided to put more pleats at the back to make the skirt fuller there. I'm not sure if this was a good decision or not but I'll find out tonight.

When you turn everything right side out, the pleats look like this:

skirt attached to bodice

Some of the stitches are visible on the outside which isn't a desired effect but one I can't seem to avoid. Fortunately, when the dress is worn, the pleats rest on my hips (see the first photo for example of how much hippage the corset gives me) which hides the stitches and puffs out the skirt.

I'm going to wait to show you a picture of the whole dress until I'm wearing it...it'll be more fun that way. Ian said he'll help me mark the hem tonight and I'll ask him to take my picture. I'm pretty excited to see it on me since it looks like a real dress now. I need to finish everything by Wednesday night which is totally doable...I'm cutting it close but not really that close.

Click here for the next installment...an almost finished dress.