The Dreamstress

I’ve  skipped ahead a bit with Madame Ornata’s 1930s dress, showing you the finished (well, mostly) product before all the construction shots, so it’s time for a re-cap.

To make the slippery silk charmeuse easier to work with, and to help the bodice hang better (and hide any lumps and bumps), we flat lined the bodice pieces in an adorable cotton print from Madame O’s stash.

Madame O and I worked on the dress together – one person pinning and ironing while the other person sewed.  It was a very fun and efficient way to sew.

The skirt is topstitched to the bodice, but we tried to hide the stitching everywhere else on the dress, so there was a lot of very, very careful, slow stitching.

For the most part, I was the sewer, and Madame O was the ironer and pinner, and (most importantly), fetcher of cups of tea.

With everything assembled, we did a final fitting.  I ended up having to take in the sides of the bust a tiny bit to make it lie perfectly.

With the bodice all fitted, I carefully pinned it to the skirt, so that the bodice could be basted, and then topstitched to the skirt.

Madame Ornata described this as a dress made up of a bunch of random pieces that made no sense at all until you put them all together.  It is true that with some patterns you can see the shape of the garment right away, but with this one, there wasn’t anything until there was everything.