Despite all of that ... the toile wasn't too awful!

Having made that atrocity of a toile which didn't give me any meaningful information about the fit ... I redid it. Or at least the front section! And it isn't really too bad:

Excuse the red bra. The pleats are nice, but don't feature in the finished design. I could have left them out at this stage!

 












I went ahead and cut the lining - a satin duchesse which quite a lot of weight to it (more than the silk certainly).

I don't have many pictures from this bit of the construction. I think I was excited and basically cutting and doing the seams went surprisingly quickly.  It's difficult to see here, but I edged all the pieces with cream bias binding!

And so:

 The lining came together quickly and quite painlessly. I've noticed that when you put boning in a curve (you can just see the seams) it doesn't conform to the curve until you've attached it to another curve.  Funny that.

This is the silk: I used as much of the remainder to make a train and then trimmed it down. To do this I had to photocopy the 2 different side pattern pieces, add another eight pieces of A4 or so and make the pieces as wide as I could - within the width of the fabric.

Then I had to extend the same angle that the side pieces were going at at the centre back so that the train came out diagonally from the bum area and still touched the ground. Then the hem angle had to meet the centre back line so that it met the ground all the way along.  Hard to explain, will be easier to see in later pictures maybe.

 This is the trimmed version: still quite long!

This is the silk from the front. At this stage I have made the straps (folded four times and stitched along the open side).

They are just pinned on at the moment to get the length right, hanging all around my armpits. Actually it still wasn't right!

And there is the peachy sash that is going to go on later - like in the original dress.

The tricky bits are done by this stage! IE the fit. Actually in this picture the bust still doesn't look quite right; it needed stitching in the ditch along the bust seams to get the silk to sit smoothly and tightly over the shape of the bust. I had a phone disaster and I think I have lost these photos!

A Toile/ Toil - How not to do it

I chose a really nice fabric for the toile. Its a plain white cotton with a white printed, small leafy pattern. In fact, I even lined my toile, but the lining was a cheap fabric that frayed even when I looked at it and proved incredibly slippery in the machine. Luckily as the wedding is in September, I could afford to use a thicker lining for the real thing.

I live in a flat/house with my fiance; nobody else bar two rabbits. And I have done 90% of the work within these four walls.  So perhaps it should have occured to me that making a version of the dress that I would be able to put on inside out, pin alterations into and so on should be easy to put on and off myself.

No such luck.

Instead, I made a mock up of the real thing (which, as you might notice, has pleats at the waist too - an undesired design feature with all the other things that would be going on) with the plan to pin the zip seam together to check the fit.

Having reached this stage, I could have also just - shock horror - put a zip in and checked the fit that way.

Here is what I did:

Yep. I stitched the back seam; no use for that here!
And I slashed the WHOLE FRONT down the centre, including across the folds, so that I could do up and undo the dress with these stylish yellow grosgrain ties.

As you can see, there was a LOT of room in the back to take in, and I've really distorted the bust seams by taking in from both the centre piece and the sides. On the plus side, I found a neckline shape I liked quite readily!

So in future: JUST put the zip in. And on the side too! Although would this add its own problems?