Saturday, January 29, 2011

bodice alterations & a garment district celebrity

I was up early early this morning to make sure that I made it into the city to the garment district to purchase some navy blue silk for my sister's bridesmaid dress. First stop was Rosen & Chadick, where I got 4 yards of really nice dark navy silk taffetta. Lindsay had recommended them, and they had a wonderful selection of silks- and since it was so early I had the store to myself and plenty of assistance picking out a fabric. There was a beautiful deep navy silk faille, but it was over $100/yard. Sigh. Sorry, kid sister, not even my dress fabric is going to cost that much if I can help it! ;)

Next I headed over to Mood. It was 9:55, and they open up at 10 am, so the lobby downstairs had a bunch of design students and other early shoppers hanging out, waiting. At 9:59, in swept Swatch the doggie with his owner and everyone yelled "Swatch is here!!" As if there was any doubt that dog was a garment district celebrity!

Mood had some very nice lighter colored navy faille for $35/yard, but there was less than 2 yards on the bolt and no more in that color. So I decided to not pick up any more (my reasoning had been that if I bought some fabric at Mood that would work, I'd tuck away the Rosen & Chadick taffetta to use for a dress later... as if I have a pressing need in my life for lots of silk taffetta! (; ). Anyway, I ended up buying another 8 yards of muslin at Mood and chatting with the girl who cut it for me about the perils of making your own wedding dress: ENDLESS MUSLINS.

So on that thread, here are some shots from the bodice alterations of the Simplicity dress.

Tracing the outline onto swedish tracing paper
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Transferring darts and grainline
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Putting in the small shoulders dart and upper bodice length
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And the front piece with the same alterations
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I read through the directions for this dress last night, and I think I really like the option to have both silk taffetta and lace in the dress- the lace being in the form of the button-over "jacket". Very retro, but it could be cute. So I looked at laces while I was at Mood and snapped a few photos of them. The advantage of lace just on the over jacket piece is that you'd hardly need a yard, so it could be a really $$$$ one without making the whole dress far too expensive. Here's a cotton one that caught my eye there:
lace

1 comment:

Meg said...

Did you ask the staff at Mood if they restock that navy you liked? That may have been a bolt they have as part of their online operations.