the dress! as far as I can take it...

Sorry for the silence last week - I was busy with stuff. We trimmed a good 4 feet off the top of our hedges all around the property, and there was a ton of cleanup to do after that - every night, we were out bundling and bagging cedar trimmings!

I was able to take a night and finish the dress for my niece as far as I could take it. I finished the over dress and sleeve edgings. All that was left was the zipper, which I needed her for sizing. We accomplished that last night at a family dinner at my in-laws. I brought the dress down and she tried it on. (By the way, side note to my SIL - telling me your daughter is a size 10? In your dreams!) I'm not blind, and just by eyeballing her, I cut a size sixteen, and STILL had to add some fabric on either side of the zipper! Whatever, It's now done. I sewed the sipper in last night when we got home, and the dress will be delivered to Brampton tonight by my husband (his weekly poker game is at his brother's in Brampton - every Monday night, same group of guys since high school! Seriously!)

Jess now has to do all the finishing. She will sew on the trim all along the front blue edge. She will hem the whole thing. (I cut her some slack and gave her a large roll of Stitch Witchery, so she can IRON the hem). She has to find a petticoat or something to give the skirt some width. She's a little nervous about all this, but as I told her, it's her project, and she has to finish it to put her mark on it.

In any case, I have to say, I am inordinately proud of it. Considering all the shortcuts I took, it really turned out well. I didn't invest a lot of time in it, which was the point - it's not an every day kind of thing - it's going to be worn just a few times, in very specific situations. (A short play at school as part of her exam, and probably a few Halloweens).

That's the point of costumes, I feel. Short periods of wearability = short amount of time worked on it.