With wedding season coming up, I thought I'd try making a dress I could wear to a couple of them. Here's the pattern I picked, Simplicity 2250 by designer Cynthia Rowley:
I went with View A: a little longer and with wider straps than the other styles. Since the bodice looked complicated, I made a muslin of it first to check the fit and style. I'm glad I did -- I had to modify the fit a bit, and I decided to remove a couple of pleats that were just too much. Some of the pleats actually looked like sewing mistakes to me rather than design elements.
The awesome part about making a muslin -- use any color thread, write all over it, it doesn't matter!The fabric I was using for the dress was flimsy and see-through, so I also used the muslin fabric to underline the dress fabric, following these instructions. I've never underlined anything before, and while it made cutting out the dress take twice as long (since I had to cut every piece twice), it definitely made that flimsy fabric easier to handle once it was sewn to the muslin cotton. Anyway, pictures of the finished product on the hanger:
And wearing it:
And after watching the royal wedding last weekend, now I need to make a fascinator to go with it!
