MOB Dress – take three

My Lord, I sound like a broken record!  Some day I will be blogging about more than wedding sewing!  I really love making fancy dresses though!  In my secret of secret minds, my career involves making Mothers of the Bride/Groom look beautiful!

You may remember Likely you forget the fabric that I chose for the next (and I have been promised that it will be the last for a while!) Mother of the Bride gown.  It is a lovely silk burnout fabric, very sheer, with flowers in shades of  red/green/pink and black .  You will see it in the following pictures, so I won’t show it here.
I got it off of Ebay last year for a scandoulously cheap price.  I was afraid that it was not silk, but a burn test proved that it was indeed silk and not polyester “silky” fabric.  The old buyer beware adage always comes into play with online purchases doesn’t it?  This time I was lucky.

I have decided not to use Vogue 8556.   
 

I mocked up this pattern in some black and white poly and decided it added undesired bulk on my torso (read- I felt fat in it!)  The bodice was drafted too large for my boob size, and the transition between the ruched waist and the bodice didn’t translate well to my kinda pear shaped figure.  Better to leave this one to large chested, tiny waist women!
There were a few aspects that I really liked in this dress too though.  I will be dragging them over to the  Take Three dress. 
1.  the curved “halter” neck piece
2.  the back strap which I find strangely sexy!

I did some research, and found this pattern which, surprisingly, has only been reviewed once on PatternReview.  Vogue 2847 (LindsayT and EricaB – That to me is one of the good things about posting a review on PR.  You can do a search in one place, instead of trying vainly to remember who made a certain outfit, then trying to find it in their blog archives.) Look up digress in the dictionary.  There is a honking big photo of me right beside the definition!

For my rendition, I am taking the skirt portion, and drafting my own bodice for the top.  Ruched bodice, contrast halter neck band, and the back straps from the other Vogue dress.  I thought that neckband, coming down in a V was an original thought, but then I was at the Burda site and saw this dress, which has the same sort of neckline treatment going on.  I drafted my neck band from scratch – scout’s honour!  Huhnh – so much for originality!
Here it is pinned on the dressform.  So far I like what I am doing with it.  It is by no means near completion, but is coming together in a good way.  I have done a lot of ruched work in the past two years, but never for myself.  My next post will show how I did the ruching on this bodice.   
 

Todays Postscript…. 
It was another beautiful day in the neighbourhood today.  We worked on the yard, cutting down some large evergreens that were blocking the view of the house, and did some very overdue trim work on the yard.  My gardens are dreadfully neglected this year!

Tagged as: MOB Take Three, silk, Wedding sewing