The Time for Losing Hope Has Long Since Passed

Tuesday was another long day of sewing on the dress. The hand sewing takes much longer, and there are often times when only one person can be working on the dress, so it slows the process down quite a bit. We worked for ten hours, mostly non-stop.

There were lots of little details to be worked out!

We found ourselves stumped once again and turned to our couture books for guidance, and made one phone call to our mother, an experienced seamstress, as well. Teresa provided us with a dramatic reading from the couture book while Jenny acted out the instructions to help us understand them better. Once we understood what was needed, we began sewing with a new energy. It really is just a matter of time!

Teresa's dramatic reading of the couture book

We worked at sewing hook and eye closures on the dress. These little beasties are difficult to sew on, especially when it is important they not be seen. They are small, difficult to hold in place when sewing, and tricky to position correctly. It took several attempts just to get two of them in place, and more than one pricked finger in the process.

Hooks and eyes and buttons

Jenny never stops sewing!

We needed to reposition a couple buttons to make sure everything was straight. We gave up on putting more hook and eye closures on and I went out and bought snaps while Jenny continued sewing. We should have bought the alcohol version of snaps as well. Jenny was a bit disappointed when I returned with only metal snaps for sewing.

We sewed the lining down to the dress to make it less likely to pull up and reinforced a few seams.

At the end of the evening, we began looking at how to do the pick-ups on the dress. We used the red clips to hold the dress up in various places to see how it will look. It was difficult because with Stephanie in the dress, she couldn't see what we were doing, so we had to take quick photos and show her our plans off the camera. I'm sure there will be a bit of adjusting to do when we get that far.

Pick-up positioning

It sounds like we don't have much to do: the pick-ups, the ruching, the snaps (and a couple more hooks and eyes), but it is amazing how long each step can take. By 8 o'clock, we'd been working for 10 hours, and so decided to pack it up for another day.