Teal Lace Dress – One project too far?

Hey-lo!

Do you ever realise that you’ve challenged yourself to a little TOO MUCH, but you’re just not willing to give up on any of it? That’s me at the moment, I’m sad to say.

I’ve been trying really hard to form better habits lately, and to knock bad habits on the head. For instance, I have a terrible TERRIBLE habit of chewing my lips. Not, sexy ‘ooh look at me’ lip biting, but proper chewing until things start bleeding. So, this month I’ve challenged myself to break that habit. I’ve also been working on fixing my diet (not that it’s particularly bad or anything, but just looking at my sugar intake, and trying to get it down as much as possible) and when you add that to my current habit of exercising 6 times a week, and also participating in Me Made May, things have been feeling a little…. pressured around here. I hadn’t even really noticed that I’d given myself a lot of challenges until my lovely friend Erica pointed it out, and suggested that I not be too hard on myself if things slip a little.

On the sewing front, I’ve been working on a Negroni shirt for Mr Cuckoo (it was supposed to be a present for his birthday LAST October, but oh well, maybe it’ll be ready for his birthday THIS October instead!) but then realised that a wedding that last time I looked was months away, turns out to only be a couple of weeks away now. So, cue mad rush to make a dress in time for the wedding on the first of June! I think ‘too many challenges’ is the story of my life at the moment!

I already had an idea of the kind of dress I wanted to make for this wedding, and had been pinning dresses like mad:

Dresses 1-3 from shopruche.com and Dress 4 from Modcloth

I knew I wanted something either teal or maybe aqua, although I was ready to go for blue-grey if I couldn’t find the right colour. I definitely wanted lace, and decided to have another go at underlining (my first attempt was an unmitigated DISASTER) I browsed through my patterns and decided to go with Simplicity 2444:

I figured that the plain view A was very similar to my inspiration dresses, although I decided I wanted the short sleeves too.

So finally, this weekend I headed into town to see if I could get some lace fabric and something to underline it, although I was getting ready to have to pick a totally different colour if necessary, but I TOTALLY lucked out!

Left: Teal Lace Middle: Linen Right: Lining

I managed to get a lovely teal lace remnant, some linen to underline it with, and some poly lining for £30! WINNER!

I spent most of Saturday working on a muslin, using the lining. Before I cut anything out, I added 1.5″ length to the bodice (I should just do this to EVERY pattern automatically. I have a really long body!) and I also decided to cut the skirt front on the fold (I thought having a seam on the skirt front was a bit weird honestly!) Then I cut out the bodice and skirt in the lining and then basted the entire thing together and pinned it on. All the time I was working on the muslin I was really happy with my pattern choice, and wasn’t expecting to really have to do very much except some minor tweaking, so when I pinned it on, I was SO DISAPPOINTED. It was just so…… FROOFY. All the pleating in the skirt made it stick out all over the place and (probably as a result of the shiny lining) it looked like a 1980s bridesmaid’s dress. YUCK. I’d seen so many gorgeous versions of this dress online, but it was really doing NOTHING for me. I decided to take out all the pleats at the back of the skirt (my backside is big enough without pleating, thankyouverymuch) and to take out the middle pleat in the front and move the other two sets of pleats in slightly so that they matched the bodice darts. After spending AGES on making the changes to the pattern pieces, I unpicked the lining and recut the skirt pieces, and then basted the entire thing back together. It definitely looks much better than it did! Of course, now that I’ve managed to get the pattern to the point where I’m happy with it, I’ve totally run out of steam – I’ve managed to pick up a bad case of tonsillitis which has meant I’ve spent the last two days at home, but feeling so rough I have had no impetus to sew whatsoever! The worst part is, I won’t be able to work on the dress from Friday to Monday evening, because we’re off to Wales surfing…. which does NOT give me a lot of time at all to work on the dress!

I can’t help but wonder whether I managed to get sick because I’ve been trying to do too much! I’m still not ready to give up on the dress though, and am hoping that once I get the actual fabrics cut out and baste them together, it shouldn’t take too long to sew up…….. right????? Please tell me that it’ll be super easy and quick!!!!