Invisible progress, and sleeve experiments

Even though I've had quite a lot of sewing time this week, anyone expecting photos showing a radically different dress is going to be very disappointed. Most of that time has been spent replacing tacked-on trim with properly sewn-on trim. It was only once I had completed the machine sewing that I remembered that the edges all had to be hand sewn down, as I did with the pockets. This was done from the wrong side, and took some time as I had to constantly check that the stitches weren't visible on the right side.

Once all the trim was on, I could finish sewing the back facing in place.

This just needs buttons and loops now

The next job was working out how to attach the 'trim' (actually 19mm / ¾" straight grain strips of the dress fabric, satin side out, with the raw edges pressed under) in a more-or-less horizontal manner round a darted sleeve head. I decided that the only way to do this would be to use a shaped piece instead.

To work out the shape, I first cut a sleeve head out of tissue paper, taped the darts closed, and pinned it to the armscye.

Tissue sleeve in place

Then, I marked roughly where the top of the trim should be.

The marks are just visible

I removed my tissue sleeve, snipped open the darts, and laid it flat.

The darts created a slightly jagged line

I traced all this onto a second piece of tissue, so that I still had the original if I needed to make any changes. By this time the markings were getting quite busy, so I drew the darts in blue to identify them. I folded the darts on version two, smoothed out the upper curve, and added a second curve 19mm below.

It looks even more odd with both lines complete

Then I taped the darts closed, and cut along the curves.

I have a pattern!

I basted the sleeves back into the dress, and pinned the tissue pattern on. I think it works reasonably well. (Apologies for the very blurry image. I couldn't take a close-up in the mirror without blocking out the light, so I had to stand some distance away and enlarge the relevant part of the photo.)

Not bad

I had made some stiffeners to go inside the sleeve heads, just pointed ovals of silk organza folded in half and overlocked.

Sleeve stiffener

I’m not sure if I will actually need them, or if the applied 'trim' shape will fill out the sleeve enough on its own. Clearly more experimentation is needed. This is what slow sewing looks like!