The Lattice Gown, Final Edition (Until I Decide to Make Lattice Gown 2.0)

Oh hai.  The Real World™ stole me for a bit, and "tomorrow" turned into next week.  Anyways...

When I left off the skirt was totally done and amazingly awesome, but the bodice... meh.   It was just a super basic bodice; no sleeves, no bertha or any trim and ill-fitted to boot.  While I plan to make a completely new bodice in the future, I decided to get another wearing out of this one by finishing it off and correcting what bits I could.  Again, I didn't take many pictures of the process, but hang around till the end and I'll show you lots of the finished dress!

First up- sleeves.  Although I used Simplicity 5724 as a base for my bodice, I find the sleeves on the pattern to be almost comically ginormous (although that could be a result of my fabric choices the one time I used it).  Judge for yourself-

I'm pretty sure that enormous sleeve has devoured my upper arm and is making plans to snack on my elbow.

I like them for some things, but for this dress I wanted a smaller, more delicate sleeve.  I opted to use the sleeve pattern from Truly Victorian 442.  Unfortunately I don't recall if I used it as-is or added some fullness.  I used the evil silk gauze of evil, but since these were just two small sleeves I didn't mind that I had to hand sew them (and pin the everloving s**t out of them, and deal with the fabric deciding to shift and veer off in unpredictable directions, and washing my hands every two seconds, and... yeah, ok it was still annoying as all hell).  Since you can see through the gauze I used French seams so that no raw edges showed.  I decided to bind the top and bottom edges of the sleeves with skinny bias tape made of the cream silk used in the skirt for the same reason.  The sleeves were fully finished on all seams/edges/what-have-you before I attached them so that they can easily be taken on an off at will.  I whipstitched them to the bodice at the top and sides of the armscye, leaving the bottom open.  I wasn't sure what the range of movement would be with these sleeves, and since they are made of such a delicate fabric I figured leaving the bottom unattached would allow me to raise my arms without the possibility of ripping them.  I'm quite a fan of how the sleeves turned out and will probably take them off of this bodice and sew them to bodice 2.0 when it is made. 

 

 French seams, handsewn bias edging, and the bottom portion of the sleeve left detached from the bodice.

Fresh from a fairly successful experience sewing the evil gauze, I started on the bertha with high hopes for fairly painless success.  That quickly devolved into growling and cursing.  I wanted the softer look of the gauze for this part, rather than the crispness of the taffeta or dupioni.  Initially I  wanted to make a pleated bertha, perhaps with the cream dupioni to back it, but with this gauze?  No friggin' dice.  After much fussing and pulling of hair (figuratively speaking of course; I had a buzz cut at the time) I just took a length of the stuff, pinched and tacked it to the bodice at CF and the shoulders and let it fall loosely in between the tacks. 

I couldn't quite figure out what to do with the excess in the back.  I tried a few things, then ended up tacking it a few inches shy of the CB and letting it fall freely from there.  The ends aren't finished or anything; I figure if they fray too much I'll trim them between wearings. 

To finish off the trimming I tacked the two roses I'd saved from earlier on at the shoulder.  To see how these roses were made, go here.

I still cannot get over these roses.  LOVE THEM.

As mentioned previously, the bodice was in serious need of some padding on top.  Each bust pad in the Simplicity pattern is made with three stacked layers of batting; each layer is cut in a sort of teardrop shape and each one is smaller than the previous one so that the pad is thicker in the middle and thinner on the edges.  I wasn't able to use the original pattern as is b/c I'd modified the neckline too much.  Cutting the pads down on top didn't quite work either; for some reason they just didn't set right.  I ended up making custom pads.  I started by laying down a single layer of batting across the whole bust to give a smooth line.  I "feathered" the bottom edge of this by gently pulling the batting apart so that there wasn't an obvious ridge where it ended.  I then cut a small oval to fit in the pointiest part of the bust, then a slightly larger oval, etc etc.  The shape of each piece changed slightly to accommodate the shape of the area it covered.  As I added each layer, I loosely tacked it to the previous one.  Periodically I held the bodice up to my body to see if there were any spots that needed more padding.  When I'd added enough to fill out the bodice adequately I cut a scrap piece of lining to cover the whole mess and carefully stitched it down around the edges.  

And more padding, and more padding...

I could have ripped open the side seams and let the waist out some, but I didn't care enough about the gap in the back to go through all of that, so I called it done.  On with the finished pictures then!

You can see the sleeve quite nicely here.  You can also see that I forgot to understitch the lining at the bottom of the bodice so that it wouldn't creep out and be visible.  Ah well, next time I'll likely pipe it as I usually do.

 

So far I've worn it out to dance twice, but currently I've got it packed away waiting for some awesome event to pop up that requires an over the top dress.  Any suggestions?

Roses!

I'd seen a few "how to make fabric roses" tutorials here and there on teh interwebs and thought that it looked fairly easy. Turns out it takes quite a bit of skill (and luck) to make a pretty rose! My first attempts looked like lumpy wadded up bits of scrap fabric. I tried a couple of different methods and some different fabrics and pretty much failed at them all. Sadly, I can't find the photos I took of those first horribly ugly attempts, otherwise I'd post them in all their terrible glory.

Dramatic reenactment of first attempt.

But bit by bit I figured out which things worked. I ended up combining things from a few tutorials and finally came up with a passable rose! I'll try my best to show what I did, but be forewarned that while it seems simple, doing it well involves fiddling and practicing till you find what works for you and your fabric.

Back when I dyed the bottom ruffle I also tossed in some extra silk gauze and some silk organza so I could play with both and see which worked best. My original plan was to use the gauze as I thought it might make beautifully soft roses, but it turned out it looked terrible no matter what I did! I'd guess it's too soft and flimsy to hold a good shape, although it might be fun to try doing it again using a stiffer fabric to support the gauze. That might be a good way to get pretty two-toned roses actually...

Anyways, I quickly figured out that the organza was going to work best. I cut a strip about 3" wide and 27" long and pressed it in half lengthwise. Then I turned the edges inside to meet the fold and pressed again. Basically I made double-fold bias tape, except it hadn't been cut on the bias.

Non-bias bias tape. The raw edges are all inside the fold.

I folded one end down a bit, rolled it in some to create a point at the top, then wound the strip around the folded/ rolled part a time or two to create the start of a bud. I pinched it at the bottom and sewed a couple of stitches through all the layers at the base to hold it all together.

One end folded over

The fold was rolled inwards; making it tighter at the top and looser at the bottom
gives it a conical shape with a nice point at the end. This is the beginning of the bud.

A loose wrap around or two...

... and stitch the bottom to keep it all secure

Here's where it gets a little tricky- from here on out you continue to wrap the strip loosely around your bud, but every so often you "twist" it; that is, you fold it outwards and continue wrapping. The edge that was on the top will now be on the bottom and there will be a twist that resembles the slightly curled edge of a petal. There's no rhyme or reason to when you do this; you just make those folds whenever they seem appropriate.  I also varied how loosely/tightly I wrapped it. Every so often you should pause and sew a few stitches in the bottom to keep everything together.

In the process of making the first fold.

This is after a few more wraps and folds. I'm about ready to make another fold.

I've folded the strip outwards. The edge that was on top is now on the bottom...

...and continue wrapping.

Don't forget to stitch through all layers at the bottom after every few wraps!

Clear as mud? I tried to take a video of the process, but I can't for the life of me get my camera to focus on anything close up, so after six videos of a blurry reddish blob moving about I gave up. Anyways, finishing it off- when I'd wrapped and folded to the point that the rose was looking nice and full, I folded the strip once more, this time angling the whole strip towards the bottom instead of back around the flower again. I stitched it securely, cut off the unused portion of the strip and stitched everything some more just to be sure.

Ta-Da! This was my first successful rose!

Then I made more...

...and even MORE!

I needed one for every bottom juncture of the lattice plus a few for the bertha of the bodice. I put the prettiest ones aside for the bodice; I figured they'd be closer to eye level and I wanted them to look their best. For foliage I used pinking shears to cut leaf shapes out of the green silk. I lined up each bottom lattice juncture directly over the uppermost point of the ruffles, placed the leaves at the center of each juncture and stitched all the way through the skirt. Once that was secure I centered each rose on top of each set of leaves and stitched that down as well.




All that was left to do on the skirt was finish up the closures. I put a large hook and bar on the waistband and used hook and eye tape to join the back halves of the green pointed part of the overskirt. Done!