Vintage Ball Gown

As you already know I am making a vintage ball gown for a military ball coming up. If you check out my sewing page you can see where I started out. I have now managed to get the base dress sewn and prepped and started applying the vine to it.

Here is the dress after I had sewn up the gather at the hip and pinned in the lace across the bodice as well as pinned it to the tulle underskirt.

Here I have finished hand sewing the bodice lace into place. I had to take out the broken zipper and add a new one and put a hook and eye at the back. There wasn't one originally, but its not good on zippers to be holding all that stress, especially with a strapless gown. I wouldn't want the zipper to give out at the wrong time, lol.

Here are the finished gathers sewn in. The picture is sideways, sorry, but you get the idea. I did the same thing with the tulle underskirt. The tulle and lace hangs lower by about 3 inches and has only about 4 gathers in it, but it flows with the velvet and I like that.

Lastly are the pictures of the pinned vine and flowers. I haven't sewn these down yet. It took me a good hour to get the vine to lay the way I wanted it to. I then added the flowers and leaves so I could make sure the vine was going to hang right when it was all put together. I ended up twisting the vine a few points, which wasn't in the original design, but I like how it lays and actually how it looks, more 3D this way.

The side view of the vine pinned down with the leaves and flowers. Since I altered my original design I am going to use these pictures to help guide me to where I liked everything. I spent an afternoon perfecting it, so I didn't want to forget where I placed a leaf, or what angle I had a flower at.