You Can Tell It's Made by an Engineer

It's time to get cracking on the wedding dress. Self-imposed deadline of the end of March for the bodice, and I've got crazy school deadlines in there too. It's time to ban myself from any other projects*. In the interest of pushing myself to keep making progress, I'm going to try to post progress updates. That way it won't feel like such a big project, when there are little milestones along the way.

* excepting the dress I'm making for our engagement pictures, which is almost finished anyways.

So below is the draft of what I want the dress to look like. This was a test version that I used to try out a bunch of different techniques, so it's sloppy and the colors aren't right, but you get the idea.

In order to make sure the sides are symmetric, I gave myself a grid to work off of. I couldn't find any skinny tape that wouldn't leave a sticky residue on poor Gertrude, so I just pinned ribbons. I think it's my engineering side coming through - I always feel more comfortable working on graph paper!

Next steps: 

1) Lay out strips of scrap fabric to outline where the final strips will go.

2) Make a couple dummy strips (good thing I hoard charmeuse remnants!), properly interfaced and everything, and practice hand sewing. If the hand sewing doesn't look quite right, I've already practiced doing it by machine, but I think the wedding dress is an appropriate place to take the time to do hand work! 

I'm thinking I need to wear gloves to avoid staining/mussing the silk. Latex gloves probably aren't very comfy but may do the trick. Besides, then I can look like a deranged scientist while sewing my dress!