Wedding dress progress update

Another quick one from me - it's been a while since my last wedding dress progress update... so you must be wondering if I had given up on it already?! Not only because I spent 2.5 days on my shiny new green dress? and a couple of days feeling over the moon with it?


Of course not! I've kept going with it and now I'm pleased to report a couple of milestones!


Milestone 1. April 2012 marks the end of hand sewing of all the seams on ALL layers (yep all 7 of them!) of my wedding dress - so I have now hand overcast all the exposed seams, pressed seams flat where appropriate and catch stitched seam allowances to the fabric/underlining. I haven't got a photo to hand but will be sure to share the world of hand sewing with you when I get a chance!


Milestone 2. I'm ready for the lace-up back! I finally know how to do this!


After I made the covered cord for the loops (see Tutorial), I have altered the fit of the mock-up bodice/corselette and tried out the continuous looping as opposed to the criss-cross method adopted previously. Here's a picture of the new attempt:

I tried it on one side of the mock corselette, with 2 different types of cords. One is from Liberty, the first 7 slightly thinner loops on the left of the picture, and the other a viscose/nylon thicker cord. I preferred the Liberty one (apparently I have expensive taste :o) so will probably go for that for the wedding dress. 


Just in case that the loops still aren't strong enough, I also secured them to a strip of silk organza selvage to help maintain shape too. Now I can sleep tight!


So this is what I have ended up with:

The loops on the left are the new ones - I sewed them in between the 2 layers and simply did a dart for the right hand side. Although I feel able to proceed with the real thing now, without (a lot of) fear, there are still a couple of things that I will do differently for the wedding dress lace-up back:

1) The loops on both sides still stick out too much when pulled so I'm going to made the loops even less deep. 

2) I'm going to insert/move spiral steel boning next to the closure on both sides, in order to have a smoother finish and less wrinkles. 

Other than that, with my chosen fabric (the silk dupion), the strong but skinny cord from Liberty, and V shape that I'm finally happy with, I am ready to move forward! The end is (almost) in sight - get ready to celebrate!