Return of Lame'

I sewed at school Tuesday night and finished my share of the knit dresses; even got elastic threaded through the backs. Each one needs to be adjusted to fit the girl, and they still need either snaps or buttons (Placement to be determined by a fitting), so I've got them as done as I can get 'em.

So it's on to a new project. I *wish* I'd had the camera with me the day they were fitting the costumes initially...this is a heavy white satin wedding dress that was found at a local thrift store. It had some stains on it (you can see where they've been, um, 'whited out' if you look closely), and it has already been embellished a bit (the gold and white sparkly stuff...the lace is original), but, ohmygoodness, what a fabulous dress this was in its day! It fits the actress like a glove; fitted with french darts that begin very low on the hips and curve up; there are about 3 darts at the elbow of the sleeve for ease there. There's no label in it; I don't know where it came from.



















It also has a watteau (did I spell that right?) train...attaches to the shoulders. It's the same white satin, pleated into the shoulder attachment and underlined with nylon net on the back to give it enough stability and structure to stand out. But the back side was just that net. No lining. The job *I* got was to line the train w/gold lame'.

I didn't have a good cutting surface, so consequently the bottom of my 'lining' isn't as even as I'd like (sorry I didn't get a photo! We were rushed right at the end of the evening). I folded the train along the CB seam, then put the hemmed side edges on the selveges of the folded lame' and trimmed away a wedge of the lame', angling out to the bottom, following the seam on the train. Then split the lame' on the fold from where the angle ran off the edge to the bottom. From the wedge I'd cut at the top, I cut a godet that I inserted into the bottom on the on-grain cut portion. That made enough flare for the sweep. (ETA: In hindsight, that was pure luck that it fit; I didn't do any math on it. Whew.) I machine stitched the sides together before we had to clean up and head out, but I think the top and bottom edges will need to be hand finished, because of the pleats at the top and the uneven lining at the bottom. I don't know if I'll do that or if someone else will do that.

Gotta do some laundry sometime...