Party Dress - Final Pin Fitting

final fit

Finally I have bitten the bullet and completed the pin fitting on the party dress. I hesitated for fear of doing it wrong... but decided enough was enough and just did it.
First I marked all the take-ins, then I took out all the pins and laid the pieces out flat. Then, I could measure the total amount I took the dress in. There was a lot of variation - with much more taken in at the front. Having decided this looked weird, I divided the total amount reduced by the number of edges - giving me 36mm.

waist and hem level

The other modification I made at this time was lowering the neckline - by literally just cutting it down. I did this on the front center piece, lowering 3/4", and the side fronts (including arm hole) tapering to nothing at the side seam.
Then I repinned everything back together with an even reduction at the waist of 36mm per edge.
Next was a fitting. Having decided the waist was adequate I was disappointed that the repinning didn't eliminate another problem I was having - the front hem riding about 2.5" higher than the rear.
The solution was lengthening the dress at the lower "raise or lower here" marking - which I had forgotten to mark on most of the pieces. Poo!
So I marked each piece, unpinned from the hem to about there, cut across the line, pinned in a scrap of fabric, and finally re-pinned all the lower skirt edges. I lowered the front 2.5", tapering to 1" at the side seam and to nothing at the rear princess seams. I used checkered fabric which was really quite helpful in terms of measurements.
Five checkered extensions were added: one center front, one each side front, and one each side back. You can see them in the pictures.

with shoes

Final fitting... on the corset goes again. I was satisfied with the hang of the lower hem now!
I am satisfied with all of the fitting (sleeves not included... don't know what I'm going to do about those still) and am ready to move on to the next step - finalizing the muslin pattern pieces for cutting.
I have made all of my fabric purchases now - rayon lining from onlinefabricstore.net, and silk crepe de chine for the underlining from dharmatrading.com... where I also picked up some silk charmeuse.
The crepe de chine has great drape and all - but does nothing for the opacity of the dress. But it turns out that the sorta-impulse purchase of charmeuse has perfect opacity to conceal the corset. I was only going to make little drawers but now a corset cover (in this case a little camisole) is in the cards (if I have time).

love that level hem

P.S. sorry for the blurry mirror photos. They may be awful, but they help a lot with fitting!