Linen Dress Take 2

I made a dress out of this beautiful linen, a watermelon colored linen a couple of years ago.  My sister had gotten me a gift certificate for Sawyers.  However, when I had gotten about 75% of the dress completed, and tried it on, I hated it.  It looked like a maternity dress.  It was high waisted, and had a full skirt.  So, the dress and all of its scraps have been sitting in my stash ever since.

Then, I recently found a lovely book called The Party Dress Book: How to Sew the Best Dress in the Room by Mary Adams.  What a fun book.   There are so many lovely dresses in the book.  In any case, I took my disaster of a dress, and started working on it.  I didn't have enough fabric to make another bodice, so I used a complimentary fabric, but didn't like the disconnected look between the two fabrics, so then I used a technique she suggests in which you sew strips of bias to the bodice.  It really helped.  It took me 3 days to get to this point in the process.

Now, I am working on :

• the skirt lining which will include some of the tulle shown on the floor under the dress,   
• installing the zipper, 
• adjusting the hem which is very uneven due to modifications on the skirt,
• adding a fabric to the hem using a technique of sewing on a fabric cut in the same circle as the bottom of the skirt (see details on the "Sewing the Feliz Dress" post),
• and lining the bodice.

Hopefully, I will like this dress once I finish.  It is a bit different from the style of dress that I usually wear, but I love the color and fabric and I like fitted dresses, and I am working hard to get the fit right on this one.