Rough day in the sewing room...

Let's just say that, if this had been any kind of competition like the Great British Sewing Bee, today is the day I would've gone home.

It was noonish before I actually sat down to sew; laundry and such, you know, but I figured it'd take me about six hours to sew up the dress.

ha ha and ha.

The dress has a lined surplice bodice.  The skirt was not to be lined, but the fabric I'm using is very nearly lawn-weight and needed a lining.

I did not think through how impossible it is to fully line a dress with a surplice bodice.  The bodice lining has to be sewn to the crossover parts, and that is sewn into the skirt.  There's no way to sew the lining skirt to the lining top.  I tried a number of things that didn't work; finally decided I was just going to have to sew the skirt lining on by hand.

And I had the graduate try on the dress.  I don't know what happened between the muslin and the first fitting...but there were some issues with the fit of the bodice.  I made a few tweaks; the before-the-lining fitting was the second try on.

And the right front bodice just Did Not Work.  It looked like it was shifted off center, but all the measurements indicated it was where it should be.  I don't know if something  in the lining was pulling wrong...that looked ok, too, from the inside, but there was no disputing the fact that it looked horrible when it was actually on her.

Really, really horrible.

Call it a wadder and throw it in the trash can horrible....and you know how much I hate wadders.

Except 'wadder' is not an option with this dress; we are out of time and options.

Then I recollected that I probably had enough fabric to cut the other view of the bodice....

I thought of the nicely inserted zipper...and all the trimmed and serged seams...and I knew that it was the only way this dress was possibly going to be salvaged.

So I took the zipper off, took the skirt off, cut a new front and back bodice and front and back lining from the UNFITTED bodice on the pattern, hoping  it would work.

And I commenced to making stupid mistakes.

Again, things on the bodice went wonky.  I'm beginning to think the on-sale poly I'm using for the lining is off grain.  I'm not even going to try to describe the weirdness that happened when I put the lining in; even understitching didn't completely fix it.  I've got a cobbled up bit on one shoulder strap; and it's visibly narrower than the other, if anyone looks close.

Wadder not an option.  Forging ahead.

I put the first skirt piece on wrong-side-to right side.  Discovered it after I had serged and trimmed the seam.

Out it came...then I had to offset those two pieces when I sewed them to the correct one.

The invisible zip went in pretty much right the first time...except one of the waistline seam allowances got flipped down.

Took out a bit and fixed it.  It was just a teeny fix and, after I did it,  the zipper looked pretty good.

Then I noticed the twist in the shoulder.

I made sure I walked the edge around before sewing the second side of thezipper so that I did NOT get that twist...I have no idea how that happened.

There was no way I was taking that zipper out.  I opened up one of the shoulder seams...lining, understiching, everything.... untwisted the bodice,  sewed up the shoulder seam and then handstitched the lining back in place.

No, it's not like the other side, but it works.

And that's where I was 13 hours after I started.

No dress, and no assurance that what I've done is even going to be wearable.

Not even going to be home until about 7:30 tomorrow night.

So.  yeah.