SEW Sweetheartish!

I have thus declared Meri's Sweetheart dance dress complete.  

We modified a couple things, like NO shoulder pads this time.  That is SO 1980s...  Well, not really, but it didn't suit the dress on Meri.  AND we decided to leave the bow on.  

It looks so striking with it! 

 

I had an old wool coat sitting in my stash with a fabulous big circle chain on the belt.  I pulled it off and used a couple of the circles for the bows.  Yep, there are two of them.  One at the neck and one on the purse.

I put in the lining by stitching it in with the machine.  Both at the waist and at the zipper.  In the past, I either give the lining at the zipper a lick and a promise to hand stitch it someday, then don't.  But it was so easy to do it this way, that I think I'll put the invisible zippers in like that all the time now.  I did screw up a little at the very top of it...  but we'll just stay mum about that.

That's my lick and a promise for the future, to figure out how to put in the lining and not screw up that part up.

OH!  And this is the first time I used some Fusi-Web when putting in the zipper.  OH MY!!!  Where has this stuff BEEN all my life?!  You iron it onto the edge of the fabric where the zipper will go.  Rip off the paper backing, place the zipper and iron into place.  THEN you can stitch it in and you don't need pins to hold it in place as you sew.  Wow, it looked good!!!

Then I made up a little purse for Meri to haul around her phone at the dance.  It'll probably sit with all the other purses in a pile on the floor while they dance, but at least it will look good.  The heavy chain became the strap as well.  I have replaced the red thread holding the circle on, with invisible thread so it's more subtle.  Meri said that I'm being more of a perfectionist than she is.

Just call me Mom-zilla....