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Wednesday 21 July 2010

Lace revolution

You may recall this dress from a while back. It was a great charity shop find, accompanied by lovely G. It's been on a few outings already, but L's French Revolution themed Birthday garden party demanded something a bit more out there. With lots of lace.

With a rough idea of where I wanted to go, I laid out the dress and began to prepare for its surgery:


First the sleeves. They were disappointingly lacking in lace, and I needed something which would swish prettily. Thankfully Soho Silks obliged me with a cheap off-cut of lace, while another customer wittered on about how she's currently having to wade through hoards of teen girls to get to her current client: one of the Jonas Brothers. Quelle hardship.

Right, after chopping off a slightly random length of lace I ruched it and sewed it in place:


Much better! My wonky sewing was later covered with some lace salvaged from the collar, but more of that later..


Next it was the neckline. The current collar was a little too demure for my 'Renaissance heaving bosom' mental image. We definitely needed more decolletage:


More lace was cut and pinned in place:


Handily, I had a length of pearl trim with was almost exactly the correct length. I took that as a sign and hand-sewed it on after machining the lace:


That was pretty much it! My enthusiasm definitely made up for the 'I don't have a clue what I'm doing' and somehow it turned out alright.

But now I needed some fru-fru shoes..

New Look obliged with a cute pink pair, but they needed to be prettified. Out came the trimmings and lace boxes!


Some bows were constructed, necklace butchered and hey presto!


I sewed a brooch back to each bow to ensure that the shoes could be de-prettied afterwards and attached 'em.


So now it was down to the final bits, thank God for Claire's Accessories!


This You Tube video was also ace for helping me with the hair. I knew that afro wig would come in handy!


So there we go. Not as hard as had imagined! I think this will inspire me to grasp the scissors with a little more confidence next time.

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