So after some mild hiccups in delivery I have a new bias tape maker arriving today! YAY! I’ll be able to move on after making all this bias tape. I’m hoping today to try out by drafted pattern for the side piece as well for the blue dress re-do.
This is the pattern piece to the left that I’ve drafted onto some plain brown wrapping paper. (My preference for my own drafted patterns because of it’s sturdiness.) I did not do this freehand, I’m not that talented. I did use my french curve tool a.k.a. Dritz’s Styling Design Ruler. (It’s something that all costumers should have!) I’ll talk about that tool at another time though. The next step is to cut it out of some muslin and try it on the dress to see if I need to make any adjustments before cutting it out of the dark blue linen. I’m hoping I can get at least this much done today before I have to go pick up my little man at daycare at 3:30.
The hem will have to be addressed next and maybe I can get that done tomorrow or Friday night. I’m hoping to have the major components of the dress put together (or fixed) no later than next week. By that I mean the added side pieces, hem piece, and shoulders. I’m thinking that there may need to be a facing put on the neck as well but I’ll see when I take the shoulders apart.
The bad news is that the lovely gold fabric in the swatch that I had planned to use for bias tape to cover the joining of the dark blue and light blue material refuses to be turned into bias tape. Even after several tries with the bias tape machine and doing it manually. GRR. Now I will have to revert to more commercial sources. I happen to have a fair stash of commercial trims of varying historical “period-ness.” Meaning, some are more period looking than others. I’m sure that I will spend a significant amount of time trying to decide what route to take but so far I’m leaning towards a plain bias tape trim or something equally plain in my designed trim. I will NOT be doing a blue trim though. I’m looking for something with higher contrast. Yellow, gold, or possibly orange are colors that I think would be ideal.