A Rose Dress Bodice Muslin, of Sorts

Yes, it's fashion show season again! This year, Syd designed a "Rose Dress," one whose details were a little on the light side this time around, since all her design sketches turned into grand "Sydney on the Runway, Framed by Lights and Surrounded by an Enamored Audience" sketches.

Although my main goal is that Syd take ownership of her design, I didn't push too hard for additional details since, just between you and me, this way it's a little more likely that I'll be able to actually create the dress. Suffice to say, the dress should be red, have a skirt that looks like rose petals, be sleeveless, have wings, and be just as short as I will let it be (and that's knee-length, poor kid).

I have an old bridesmaid's dress given to us by a friend, that I hopehopeHOPE will have enough fabric for the dress' bodice and outer skirt, but I'm trying to be extra careful with the fitting and patternmaking, to be sure, and thus I've been sewing up some practice components in quilting cotton as muslins, of sorts. They're not *real* muslins, because I can't stand to sew anything that isn't wearable on its own, but they do help me create/refine my rose dress pattern, so there you go.

This bodice, for example, comes from Little Girls, Big Style, a book that I LOVE for sewing for Sydney, and I am going to be really sad when she soon maxes out the sizing, sigh:

I used some stash cotton for the outside and the lining (playing for a bit with the idea of making it reversible, but thankfully I abandoned that unnecessary headache), and two giant vintage mismatched white buttons from my stash for the straps. 

Nota Bene: The night that I was sewing this bodice, Matt was out for the evening. He came back quite late, and still found me hunched over the sewing machine (I have terrible, non-ergonomic sewing posture, despite the fact that I sit on a yoga ball). 

"You're not supposed to sew after 10:00," Matt said. "You know you make mistakes." We created this rule after several late-night sewing sessions in which, yes, every evening ended with me making some critical, careless, late-night-induced sewing mistake.

"But it's not ME this time!" I griped. "THIS time there's something wrong with my buttonhole foot!" Indeed, I had been futzing with the damn buttonhole foot for nearly an hour by that time, and I just couldn't get it to work. Clearly, it was broken, or the sewing machine was broken, and I'd have to take it in to THAT sewing machine repair shop, and you know how I feel about that place.

Eventually, bribed with an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras, I did leave the broken buttonhole foot and come to bed. The next morning, walking by my sewing machine on the way to the bathroom, I looked over at it and thought, "Oh, I put the lever on the wrong side!" Problem solved.

And that's why I'm not allowed to sew past 10:00 pm.

The bodice fits perfectly snugly, but was inches too short, so Will helped me measure out and lengthen it:

After lengthening the pattern, and changing the straps (the back of the rose dress will have a zipper, so the straps will be sewn in and needed to look smoother), I've got a rose dress bodice pattern that I'm very happy with. Next, IF I can stop being sick for a few days--can you believe I got the norovirus this weekend?!? That's my third illness since December!!! Whine, whine, whine!!!--is a hoop skirt constructed from unbent wire hangers, and then a circle skirt to encase the hoop skirt, and two layers of petal skirts.

Oh, and wings.