The Anatomy of a Dress Final

It's taken a minute to get pictures of me wearing the dress but finally here they are:

To recap...

Pattern:
TNT Pattern
Materials:
plaid silk/linen blend from the collection
Notions:
22" invisible zipper
white piping
rayon bemberg lining
polyester lace
rayon seam binding


All of the construction posts are here. As for the grain issues that I experienced when I cut the dress out, I fudged by adding additional length to the bottom pieces.  I believe there are two solutions to off-grain fabric.  One - chuck it.  The grain is so off that there is nothing you can do to salvage it.  Or two - add some length to the hemline so that you can fiddle with the hem to make it work.  Now I don't know if these are acceptable methods.  They are just things that I've worked out from my years of sewing.  


In this case, the grain is just slightly wonky and not something that I'm sure a less experienced sewist would notice.  But as I continued to cut pieces out, I noticed that I couldn't get them to line up even using a single fabric layout.  It was helpful that I cut the bodice separate from the skirt of the dress and that I added piping along with the insert cut on the bias.  All of those elements helped to camouflage the fact that the plaid did not perfectly match.


My daughter took these pictures for me today along with some of the 10 yard adventure wardrobe shots and of course, the Little Prince had to get in on the action.  Here we are together...

and one of him doing his favorite thing...watching TV!

Here's wishing all Mothers 

a Very Happy Mother's Day!

...as always, more later!