The capstone saga.

this is what i have to show after about 120 hours of work: an almost perfect fitting bodice for my evening gown capstone project. I had to fulfill about 120 hours of work to pass the class, and I never imagined the I wouldn't even have a completed dress after all those hours. I was dreaming of going to the Salt Lake Opera and get my hair done and possibly have some fancy-shmancy photos taken of me, and it looks like that wont happen for awhile. the Doc doesn't think the bottom half of the dress will be as hard as the bodice was (since i have two different sized breasts, lopsided shoulders, and an apparent hunch-back-mound of muscle in my back that the Doc discovered. very sexy).

I have received several emails from girls asking me to make a wedding dress for their big day, and I say "NO! please, no!" every time because I know how hard formal wear is now. My 14 year-old sister is lucky that i'm willing to make her wedding dress in (hopefully) 20 years. I hope she doesn't have the freak of nature body that I have. 

The best thing that came out of this project are my slopers. Because of them, all the dress on this blog were able to be created. Slopers are pattern templates of my body with all their obscurities built into them so that i don't have to do the same alterations for each outfit over and over. alterations become minimal each time, saving me time and patience. not only that, but i learned A TON.

The first 35 hours or so went toward making the fit dress, which is just a basic straight skirt with bodice and long sleeves. This is what I use to make the basic slopers, to then make the fun patterns. As you can see, I went through two different sleeves for my left arm since, once again, I'm a freak of nature. 

 

I started on a fit dress in advanced sewing, but since my evening gown was going to be fitted, I had to completley start over almost. Here is the second fit dress I made when the Doc and I finally realized that there were more issues going on than we had seen in advanced sewing. 

Once I had that done, I made my slopers, which took about 2 hours, with which I made the evening gown pattern. That is still being tweeked to this day. This is the first muslin I made of the actual gown:

 Altering this darn muslin took the next 40 hours of work. however, muslin is totally different than the actual black silk suiting i had decided on, so all of the alterations still continued. Was this muslin mock up kind of pointless? yes. But i would rather learn and practice my design on cheap-o muslin rather than $11/yard silk metallic.

The last 40 hours of hell were spent on the bodice, pictured above. I really hope i can finish this evening gown soon, but for now I need a break. I've got a snake dress to make, a chair to recover, and a graduation coming up. Time for that vacation? hardly. 

To just rub it in some more, my log book for the hours. take it in, people: