Dress Diary 1 - Part 5: Just Bead It!
Feb. 23rd, 2005 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janestarzI'd lock-stitched and slip-stitched and sewed the black part of the dress this weekend. So, this morning at 10.30 I started. I had taken the day 'off' and decided that I would be working on the Day/Night dress as I have come to fondly call it. And it would be a nice little addiction for me today.
I started by ironing the seams, and just as you think "I'm done!" you realise the lining still has to go. So you are basically, just half way. But I persisted and finally was done. My RSI-arm doesn't like ironing at all, and I try to avoid it as much as possible. After the ironing I had to put the sleeves in. I hate doing sleeves if the side seams are done already, and I was vividly remembered why this was again. I can never get them to fit with 'normal' patterns (though I must admit there is absolutely nothing normal about any commercially made pattern, let alone patterns I'm not used to which include seam allowance!). But I got them in there, and I had to pin everything only twice!
Getting both parts of the dress together was the easy bit. Deciding how to sew them together was harder. I stitched the neckline together, and also loosely sewed the sleeve ends. Wrong move. When turning the dress back right side out there was no way to get the sleeves to join again, they connected at the wrist and could no longer go together. So that was rectified. It was much harder to sew the pointy bits together with right sides out, but I managed.
I then carefully sewed a part of the shoulder seam together. Sewing the entire shoulder seam is impossible with this slippery satin, especially if you want the underside to be nice too.
After all these tiresome steps, I decided I would work on the shawl too. The dress would hardly stay put on my mannequin, the satin so soft and slippery and the neckline very wide, mid-back not sewed yet. So the shawl it was. I sewed black to gold, left and right, and then decided to get out the beads. No gold ribbon, just the beads (total money spent goes down because of this). I wanted the 'exponential' look you sometimes see on veils. How at the bottom there is a lot, and the higher up you go, the less beads/flowers/pearls you'd get. And I wanted beads, just a black satin dress with gold lining is so boring. So beads. I sketched and came up with something that looked good to me. Exponential, but not all the way up. I'd sew the beads with gold thread, tying a knot on the gold part of the shawl, next to the bead. Basically this would mean to start at the gold side, leave a bit of thread out, and put the needle through both layers of cloth to the black side. I then threaded a bead, and put the needle through again to the gold side. Thread another bead, and tie the knot tight. This would ensure a) both sides would have beads and b) that they would be in exactly the same place. I hope my thread is strong enough to keep them put. I have one end of the shawl done, and it has 48 beads on each side. So that's 96 beads per end of the shawl and 194 beads on the shawl total.
I finished sewing the beads on that end of the shawl after dinner, and decided it was enough. I'd had worked since 10.30 that morning, and tomorrow is another day of sewing. I'll copy the pattern of the beads from the shawl directly onto the other shawl so they will be identical. I'll have to adjust the cowl (front, attached to both shawls), and also work on thehem. Maybe I can make all that.
Oh, I almost forgot, we did a first fit too!
I started by ironing the seams, and just as you think "I'm done!" you realise the lining still has to go. So you are basically, just half way. But I persisted and finally was done. My RSI-arm doesn't like ironing at all, and I try to avoid it as much as possible. After the ironing I had to put the sleeves in. I hate doing sleeves if the side seams are done already, and I was vividly remembered why this was again. I can never get them to fit with 'normal' patterns (though I must admit there is absolutely nothing normal about any commercially made pattern, let alone patterns I'm not used to which include seam allowance!). But I got them in there, and I had to pin everything only twice!
Getting both parts of the dress together was the easy bit. Deciding how to sew them together was harder. I stitched the neckline together, and also loosely sewed the sleeve ends. Wrong move. When turning the dress back right side out there was no way to get the sleeves to join again, they connected at the wrist and could no longer go together. So that was rectified. It was much harder to sew the pointy bits together with right sides out, but I managed.
I then carefully sewed a part of the shoulder seam together. Sewing the entire shoulder seam is impossible with this slippery satin, especially if you want the underside to be nice too.
After all these tiresome steps, I decided I would work on the shawl too. The dress would hardly stay put on my mannequin, the satin so soft and slippery and the neckline very wide, mid-back not sewed yet. So the shawl it was. I sewed black to gold, left and right, and then decided to get out the beads. No gold ribbon, just the beads (total money spent goes down because of this). I wanted the 'exponential' look you sometimes see on veils. How at the bottom there is a lot, and the higher up you go, the less beads/flowers/pearls you'd get. And I wanted beads, just a black satin dress with gold lining is so boring. So beads. I sketched and came up with something that looked good to me. Exponential, but not all the way up. I'd sew the beads with gold thread, tying a knot on the gold part of the shawl, next to the bead. Basically this would mean to start at the gold side, leave a bit of thread out, and put the needle through both layers of cloth to the black side. I then threaded a bead, and put the needle through again to the gold side. Thread another bead, and tie the knot tight. This would ensure a) both sides would have beads and b) that they would be in exactly the same place. I hope my thread is strong enough to keep them put. I have one end of the shawl done, and it has 48 beads on each side. So that's 96 beads per end of the shawl and 194 beads on the shawl total.
I finished sewing the beads on that end of the shawl after dinner, and decided it was enough. I'd had worked since 10.30 that morning, and tomorrow is another day of sewing. I'll copy the pattern of the beads from the shawl directly onto the other shawl so they will be identical. I'll have to adjust the cowl (front, attached to both shawls), and also work on thehem. Maybe I can make all that.
Oh, I almost forgot, we did a first fit too!
