Ultimate Refashion: From 10 to 2

First off, thank you everyone for your kind words on my Ultimate Refashion post. Having an enthusiastic audience keeps me motivated to take pictures and share along the way. Thanks for reading and commenting! (ps- does anyone know how to enable replies in the comment section? I'd love to be able to reply to individual comments and have my response come up right under the question/comment it pertains to, I just can't seem to figure it out...)

I've been working on the skirt part of Chelsie's wedding dress this past week (if you don't know what I'm talking about, check out this post- and feel free to check out our inspiration board on Pinterest) and I'm pretty happy with the changes so far. Reworking the skirt has been a bigger task than I anticipated. The plan was to take a fairly full and not at all fitted size 10 skirt and make it a fitted through the hips and much less full size 2 skirt. Did that make sense? Essentially I needed to change not only the size (by a lot) but the shape too. Oh and make the train significantly shorter.

I wish I had taken a before shot of just the skirt on the dress form. We'll have to make do with this mirror-shot:

And then this one of the train:

My usual method for taking in skirts failed miserably here. The size + shape difference meant that simply taking in the side seams didn't cut it. I tried it, but the shape got really wonky and the waist line didn't allow the fabric to fall right. It was bad. Luckily I had this dress form (I knew we'd get to be good friends!) because I couldn't have done it without her. I took the skirt apart and basically pinned the separate pieces on to the dress form (which is adjustable, so right now it has my sister's waist, bust, height and hip measurements) and marked out the side seams and waist shape. Snip snip, a quick basting stitch to hold it all together, and we have this:

This is about 2/3 of the fabric I cut out.

A much more fitted shape.

And a whole lot less train.

Looking much better, although since I took this picture yesterday I've been working on fitting it down through the hips a little more. It doesn't look as dramatic in these pictures as it really is (I blame it on my crummy before pics) but trust me, it looks soooo much better. 

Hopefully I'll have the skirt shape finished soon- I ordered the lace yesterday, so once that comes I can start assembling the lace overlay! Just for fun, I figured I'd include the list I made in the first post about the dress in each subsequent post, so we (I) can see the progress (I'm a huge fan of making lists) and so we (I) can see what the next steps are. Oh, and I'm switching from highlighting completed tasks to crossing them out. Much more satisfying for me:)

Have Chelsie try on the dress and mark for fitting alterations

Ship the dress to me 

Deconstruct, including: remove the lace and illusion neckline, and separate bodice from skirt

Create pattern for lace overlay on bodice

Test dye the base layer (Chelsie wants a taupe base layer with white lace over the top)

Shop for lace

Buy lace

Make a muslin (a mock dress made up of a cheap fabric) of the bodice

Ship the muslin and dyed fabric swatches to Chelsie

Chelsie tries on the muslin and pins for additional alterations, chooses a fabric swatch

Ship muslin back to me

Alter the fullness and waist of the skirt

Shorten the train

Dye base layer

Alter the bodice base layer, including the shape of the neckline

Make alterations to muslin

Cut lace for bodice and skirt

Assemble lace bodice

Sew lace trim on unfinished edges

Attach lace bodice to base bodice

Assemble lace skirt

Attach lace skirt to base skirt

Sew together bodice and skirt

Add in the zipper

Sew on buttons (purely cosmetic)

Final fitting and hemming- in Utah, a week before the wedding

There is still a whole lot more to do, but getting the shape in place is a huge step in being able to make more progress.