Haute Couturière

Either I don't bounce back as fast as I used to, or I'm really sick. Yesterday was better than today. Today I have mostly lost my voice, and I felt like death warmed over. I had a piano lesson at 9:00 (the first one in a month) and I tried to play my warm-up. I say tried, because I could play each hand separately, but when I tried playing hands together, I sounded like I was learning chopsticks. My brain was all all fuzzy. After piano I worked for a bit with Dave on the SQL documentation, and I felt like the entire time I just sat there and looked at him with a bemused look on my face.

Then it was time to sew. And it went surprisingly well! A couple of hours into the process we decided we really needed to line the dress. So while J practiced piano and had her lesson, I ran to the fabric store and picked up lining and boning. As I was paying, the sales clerk said, "Oh you're not 55 so this won't help you", and when I informed her I was 56 she gave a 20% off everything coupon for Joann Fabrics on January 3. Hey ho, my first official senior's discount!

 When I got home and we got back to sewing, J cut out the lining and the dress, added the dart lines, sewed the lining pieces together and almost sewed the dress pieces together--all before dinner. Tomorrow we make the final decision on to bone or not to bone (the model wearing the dress has a 32" bust, a 25" waist, and 30" hips--I don't know how much structural support she's actually going to need), and we sew the lining to the dress. Then come the zipper and the gold flounces/ruffles. I don't know quite what to call them as ruffles is too frilly a word, and flounce is too floppy. These puppies are going to be wired up and have some serious structure. I don't want to take this dress too far as my dressmaker's form has 35" hips so the dress is already too big for the model and we'll probably have to take it in. If we wait until the lining is all sewn in it'll be a helluva job to size it down. I hope J will be able to try it on the model first thing next week so we'll have time to resize it.

In a perfect world we'll start the second dress tomorrow. J made some modifications to her original design now that she has learned a bit more about the form and structure of clothes--and what makes them stay on the body without scotch tape. Now she wants something more like the top of the dress on the right. In blue satin. She's surely learning to sew on the hard stuff! And the model for this one has a 36" bust and a 27" waist. She's going to need some support...