Something Scary For Halloween

 Well it's not a ghost story, it's another dress that has been scaring me. This dress is code name: Chafing Patience. It's a beautiful Morilee that is a discontinued damaged sample. It is absolutely the prettiest dress I own right now for practice. When I got this, it had make up stains and some zipper and beading damage from being tried on so much, it's been with me since July...scaring me. I am terrified of this dress.  I finally got the nerve up to wash off the stains, and I was successful. Then it got even scarier because it was prettier than before. 

I didn't think I was good enough to work 

on it for the longest time. Then I wasn't sure exactly how to hem this delicate hem. It's applique on soft netting, but it's not pickable lace it's like welded on... a puzzle for sure. My teacher and I have talked about this more than once. I asked her how to do the hem, and she told me measure, cut, place at center front taper out to sides, artistically trim applique. And she told me to let her know how it turned out. Then I did anything else I could think of instead of do the hem. I had to buy beads to fix the straps, so I waited for them to come in. Then after I washed it without my pins in it, I had to have my model try it again before I could pin the hem. I knew it was 8 inch taper, but I am full of it, and I was scared. I remarked that gorgeous 7 layer hem again, and then I bothered my teacher about it again. I walked around my studio looking at the dang thing out on the table like I was an old dude looking at a new tractor. I then watched my lace hem video again. I took out the feed dogs in my machine and put on a freemotion plate and foot. I did some practice lace hems on some yardage of lace. I really like freemotion sewing. I HATE invisible thread though. In the bobbin, it is a nightmare. So I decided on mara 360 white(it's like a gray hair from my head very thin) and then invisible thread on the top. It really is still invisible. 

Then I put that dress on the table and started with layer 1, soft tulle/netting and I did it just like I was taught.

Layer 2 was an 8 hour day of pitstains, prayers, breathholding, and lip biting. 

zoom in on those, dude this is all the pins I had holding it place. THIS is why lace dresses are expensive to alter. I had bubble tummy from the stress!  Naturally there was some hand sewing that had to happen after I did my trimming, I wish I was better the duck bill and also less of a perfectionist. It's looking pretty good so far, only 5 more layers to go. Here is the progress before I put the dress back in the bag.

The safety pin marks center front. I have not ironed the layers yet, it's a little handled looking but looking pretty good. So I did something scary, and the scary tale gets better, one of the last layers of the hem is a baby hem of organza! It's like the dress embodiment of cramps, or a charley horse, but man is it pretty. So this ends part one saga of the Chafing Patience dress, Happy Halloween!