Final installment of the Engagement Dress series

This is it! Part 3, of the Engagement Dress saga! Here we have the details on the outer layer and some photos from the photoshoot :)

Compared to the many many iterations that the base dress went through to get to a point where I was happy, the outer layer was pretty straight forward! I also only had 1 week to finish it so I was quite motivated to get things done quickly.

I pulled out the pattern pieces from McCall's M7507 for the long sleeve, deep v bodice. In the design they have the v going all the way to the waistband in the front and in the back, which after some pinning on the mannequin I decided didn't look very good in the front with the shape of my scalloped lace. I had to decide between having the two from pieces overlap or adding a vertical seam up the centre.

I did also make a muslin of the bodice using some of the orange tulle since I had so much of it. This helped me make sure there wouldn't be too much gaping and that the sleeves would fit over my biceps! It is REALLY hard to see in the photos since it's pretty much skin tone.

After the fitting on that first muslin was complete and decided on the seam up the middle, I cut out the real stuff! I used up all of the edge pieces of the fabric since I wanted the v-necks and the wrists to have the scalloped part. So now I have a chunk of "centre lace" I need to find a use for!

With the lace top done, I moved on to gathering the tulle for the skirt. In my original vision the skirt was going to have a huge voluminous skirt, that had all the colours I had purchased flowing out around me in a pretty rainbow of fall tones. So I folded the tulle in half longways and sewed a running stitch along the folded edge to create a big two layered rectangle that I could gather to fit my waist. Once I had done all four colours I pinned it on the mannequin and realised this was not going to work! I was going to drown in tulle! So I ditched the orange and white layers, just keeping the pink and maroon.

When I tried it on at this stage I realised that the gathered rectangles were adding a lot of extra volume right at the hips which wasn't great. So I cut the tulle pieces into two pieces - a front and back - and tried to add a little bit of an a-line shape that would hopefully reduce a bit of the volume at the waist but still keep the overall fullness around the feet. With the huge volume of tulle it was really hard to keep the lines straight when sewing so I was hoping all of the layers would hide any unevenness. I also ended up not sewing the front and back panels together which was very good for saving time, but not great for wind management :P

And with that I was done!! Now for some more Engagement Photos :D