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


Transferring darts and grainline


Putting in the small shoulders dart and upper bodice length


And the front piece with the same alterations


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: