I feel like a teenager, sneaking back into my own house at two in the morning, as if one of the neighbors is going to wake up from the sound of my garage door opening, and judge me for the hours I keep. I have nowhere I need to be tomorrow morning, and I am totally allowed to spend my Saturday nights away from home. Yet here I am, thinking I need to justify my actions somehow. I'll get over it, I'm sure.
My one job today was to work on that super-secret sewing project, my foster daughter's wedding dress. It has been cut out for a while, waiting for the needle to pierce the fabric for the first time. I started on it mid-morning, and went non-stop until after five this afternoon. I made enough progress to feel really good about where it stands now. The structure of the bodice is done, although the lace overlay hasn't been started yet. I skipped ahead in the steps to working on a little of the skirt. There's an inset (a "godet?" I've never been taught this term in all of my decades of sewing) that also has a lace overlay, and I prepared that part, and started making the cummerbund-style pleats in the front of the dress. But it was the bodice that took up all of my time and concentration. I didn't realize before that in my whole life, I had never constructed a garment that needed boning. I think I've had things made for me that did, like maybe my prom dress from my junior year in high school, but my mother made that one. (It was the 80s. It was a royal blue Southern belle monstrosity, and I loved the crap out of it. I repeat, it was the 80s.) Today was the first day I'd ever tried to put it in a garment, and it is a major pain in the butt! I had to trim back the plastic insert and round the edges of it, so it didn't poke through while it was being worn, and I swear I had to cut each piece four or five times. Each time, it was like the plastic grew longer. I have to hope it's finally short enough now. I also had to understitch the lining for the bodice, and it has been so many years since I followed a pattern like this, I didn't remember what that term meant. I studied the diagrams and reread the definition in the instructions three times before it finally clicked. Once I started sewing, I did it incredible slowly and carefully. The entire line of stitching was a sixteenth of an inch from the seam between the bodice and the lining, and I couldn't swerve the width of a single stitch. I'm not sure how, but I did it.
I think my ears have stopped ringing from being in a loud environment for hours. Or at least, they've stopped enough for me to try to sleep. I refuse to put too many revealing pictures of the wedding dress on the blog, so a random one from early this morning will have to do.
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