This project that took so long to complete. It is the dress for which I made the wearable toile featured in an earlier post. The dress is made using re-embroidered and sequinned lace over a matching Satin lining both of which were bought from Fabricland, Salisbury branch.

I laid out the lace so that I could identify the major motifs in the design and decide on placement. In order to ensure that the motifs were centred correctly on the bodice I traced off the front bodice onto folded paper so that I had a full pattern. This enabled me to centre up the main motif and also, very important, ensure that there was no flower exactly over the apex of my bust.

I cut the exact same patterns from the satin and mounted the lace onto its corresponding piece. Construction was quite straight forward.

I finally finished the centre back zip insertion for which I used my favourite lapped insertion method with a hand-picked final stitching.

To add a little extra feature, I machined the hem of the lining using a ‘scallop’ stitch.

I had hoped to get the dress completed in time to take to the retreat but it was not to be. Instead I wore the Iced Rose Scuba Velvet Jodi dress – that’s me third from the left in the front row.

Still,now I have a fancy new dress, just waiting for a party or function to attend so that I can wear it.