Self-drafted chiffon dress

It's starting to take shape! After draping, drafting, muslining and cutting, my chiffon dress is finally starting to look like a dress that I can try on, and I'm starting to feel a bit less paranoid that I may have just killed my gorgeous chiffon. See, it's actually looking pretty good!

The lighting in this picture is terrible and doesn't do the fabric justice, but you can see that the fitting is coming along nicely. I messed around with the gathers on the top tonight trying to get them just so -- I had a weird poufing thing going on over one boob. While one side turned out exactly the size I drafted it, the other inexplicably grew during sewing. Go figure. A little extra cutting and tucking and now it's looking better.

I was hoping to be able to get away with wearing a nude colored bra under the top, but unfortunately the chiffon is a bit too sheer for that. I tried on a tank top under the dress, but that's really not a good solution. The tank top pushes the center of the dress away from my chest, which really distorts the lines of the dress. So, I'm going to have to come up with some other way to line the dress. Probably I'll try drafting some triangle-shaped cups out of the black batiste lining fabric and see if that looks good.

Really though, these are minor problems to be worked out when compared with the major triumph that is a deep V dress that doesn't gape in the front or only cover half of my boobs. Seriously! I have never had a top that fits me this well, and I'm psyched. More to come soon!