50's dress finished!

I went against all my laziest nistincts and pulled the skirt apart. I cut about a metre off the width, and then ironed, gathered (dental floss), ironed and sewed again.


It was absolutley the right thing to do, as the dress now doesn't weigh a ton and has plenty of twirl to it. I was much more careful with my gathers this time too, distribution and stitching were much better.

So without further ado... the 50's dress!

This must be the first time I have a dress with the waist at my waist, which means breathing without a waistband around my ribs! What a sensation!
Here's me looking demure:

You'd never guess that right after these photos I killed a mouse and climbed a tree would you?

Following Gertie's suggestions I used a horsehair braid on the hem, though there must be different weights, as I don't quite have the 'loft' I was hoping for. The expression is very serious for hem considerations.  

 

I've started working on several other projects this week, including a blouse, a skirt and a rehabilitation of an abandoned dress, so I'll try to post more this week to get through it all.

I have managed to post a coupleof times on my other blog, the 'work' blog, www.caperandco.blogspot.com,, and there's some lovely Friday Flowers from yesterday up there.

In conclusion, I love this dress, and will wear it lots. In closing, the twirl:

Too much?

Oh dear.

I'm afraid I've overdone it on the ruffles.

As I said in my last post, I let the fabric decide the width of the skirt, and eyeballed a couple of pattern envelopes on line. I could have asked any one of the very friendly blogging sewists out there, but the laziness won out.

So heres a close up of the ruffling;

I measured the skirt width (yes, after ruffling and attaching) and it's close to four metres. On pattern review I found a comment stating that 3:1 ruffle is adequate. And Peter at male pattern boldness is making a skirt which has a width of just over 2 metres.

So now it seems, instead of finishing the dress today I'm going to be pulling it apart, measuring, ruffling and reattaching the skirt. -Sigh-
Can someone tell me I should keep the width?
Better now than laterI guess.

Here's the dress as a puddle. Isn't it pretty?