After, many, many toiles of the bodice, I was ready to do the first toile of the full dress for Carolyn’s wedding dress.

Of course, it was at this point that I discovered that all of the discardable toile fabrics that I could fine in my stash were in weird patterned colours, which is fine for my own mock ups, but not ideal for bridal mock ups as I want the brides to be able to get an idea of what the final dress will look like.

So I did something rather stupid.  I used one of my ugly patterned fabrics, and then I flat over-lined it in very thin white sheeting (too thin for a proper toile on its own)

I do not recommend this for toiles!  It was tricky to work with, and made fitting difficult.

Of course, immediately after going to all the trouble to cut out every pattern piece twice, and flat line them, and sew them all together, and having sent the toile off to Carolyn, I discovered an entire box with metres and metres of white and cream toile fabric.

Still, for all the ridiculous trouble, and the unsuitability of the fabric, the toile didn’t look too bad.

The mermaid shape falls a bit flat as I didn’t flat line the bottom portion of the skirt, and the fabric was simply too limp to have any body of its own.

You can see the potential skirt markings curving around the hips and then dipping down to a point above the train in the above picture.

I wasn’t happy with the bodice side seam – it leaned toward the back, so I made markings to adjust it on the side, which also meant that I had to re-draw the back pieces.

I do love the way the bodice makes a heart shape at the front:

Based on this first toile, I extended the train, made the skirt a lot slimmer to the flare, a lot flatter in front, and a bit huggy-er in back.  The bodice fit perfectly.  Not too bad.