It's Finished!

  I finished my first commissioned sewing project!

 

 
  And look, it fits! That makes me incredibly happy.

  In spite of the fabric, the thing that turned out to be the most frustrating was the buttons:

   This was the third set of (identical) buttons I had to buy. The first set mysteriously disappeared last week, so I made a special trip to the fabric store, over 35 miles from my home, just for another set of buttons. I made the buttonholes using a button from the second card for sizing, and the next morning the second set of buttons had also disappeared, except for the button I had removed from the card. I still don't know what happened but I'm guessing that Boopers was trying to be 'helpful' and lost them. I searched the entire house, even in the garbage, but couldn't find the buttons. Luckily, I am married to the best husband ever, who went to the fabric store in-between jobs and found the correct buttons for me. =) I sewed them on as soon as he got home, so they wouldn't disappear again.

  I was so nervous about the buttonholes, but they turned out all right. I made about 8 buttonholes on some scraps of the fabric to get the settings right before doing the ones on the dress... the fabric turned out to be stiff enough that my machine didn't chew it up, although it did have some trouble feeding evenly. I had to help it along.
 
  In addition to the dress, I threw in a couple fun surprises. A little singed fabric flower on a clip:

   And a drawstring coin purse:

  This is my first time making either, although this type of flower clip has been all over the internet for a while now. The purse I just invented as I went along, and it worked, although it was a little smaller than I intended it to be. If anyone is interested I can show you how I made it.

 This dress had a lot of hand-sewing... the bodice facing around the sleeves and waist, the sleeve bindings, and the placket were all hand sewn:

See the little stitches on the seam line?

  Normally my hand-stitching turns out messy and uneven, but I figured out a little trick this time: line the stitches up with the machine stitching! It still isn't perfect, but it is so much better than usual.
  I like how the bodice looks almost as nice on the inside as it does on the outside:

  Next time though, I would do the lining differently... I would turn it so the wrong side was against the wrong side of the skirt. I just think it would look better that way.

  I would also make the sash longer, as you can see here there isn't much room to tie it, even less when it is actually worn. I don't know if that is just a time-period thing, but it doesn't work well for me.

  Leslie came to pick it up today, and she was very happy with the dress, so I'm happy too.

 It feels very good to have successfully completed my first commissioned project. =)
Thanks for stopping by,