Another Bodice Test

I tried to see if I could make the fold-over thing work on this bodice, but the combination of the two peaks and a valley, plus darts, just didn't get it for me. There might be a chance on the Grace Kelly, where the underbodice opens in the front, and would just be two individual peaks. Maybe I'll try that later.

So I just gave in to the notion of making a front, a back, sewing them together and understitching to the keep the back side from trying to get to the front. More muslin was ripped off the bolt and traced out some pattern pieces. Two front bodice pieces and four side/back pieces. Later, I would remember that if you have two front pieces, that have two sides, you might want a total of eight side/back pieces.

I went back to my pressing the fold into the darts before sewing in place of basting. Probably not a great idea for "good" work, but gets the job done here. Also as before, thin metal Ezy-Hem gets hot when you iron it.

After sewing up two bodices and pressing the darts in opposing directions, I pin right sides together this time and sew around three sides and a little of the bottom. Seams are clipped to help with the pressing. By this time, there's a good bit of curvishness sewn in. I spent a while working it over and over with the ham, the seam roll, point turner and Ezy-Hem, there's a lot of shapes here.

Yet another "I know it looks like a mess now" picture

After turning and pressing, I start to test it on Lucy. Are you not supposed to vertical steam with a gravity feed iron? I gave it a shot, cause muslin wrinkles like it wants to be linen when it grows up. There's a steamer in the basement, but this room is small enough already. On the front to the sides, I'm getting good matching with the seams on the dress form cover. The top darts and long darts hit the princess lines and the side seams hit the side seams.

Getting there

As we get around the back, here's problem number whatever. I made the side/back pieces from some draped bits that weren't made to the same size as the front bodice piece. That is, they mainly captured the shape above the waist, but for this, I needed to match the front piece all the way down. It was okay for this test, but I'll remake them later. You can see here that it  doesn't hit the form cover seam between the side and center back. The edge extending past the center back is intentional, as I'm still puzzling out what I want to do for the rear closure, and will probably want  something to overlap. It would be more obvious if there was two sides to the back.

Tiers slapped back on, I don't like the placement again, but I've got some thoughts about what I might do with that part that's going to require some new draping and ruminating.