Shoulder Seams

My ‘macaron redux’ dress is officially starting to take shape and look like an actual bodice.

I managed to sew the shoulder seams this evening. These little seams really should have only taken me 30 minutes (tops) to sew up ended up taking a few hours. Darn this mouth surgery! It’s making things very difficult to focus. Ahh well, at least I managed to get something done today.

This is a shot of both the front and back bodice shoulder seams.

I ended up cutting most of the applique motifs off of the shoulders since they were a bit too large to lap over to the other side of the seam. I had the same issue before with the bodice sections; lapping the black lace onto more black lace ended up making the seams too cluttered instead of ‘invisible’ and ‘pretty’. So I only retained the motifs that landed right on the seam line.

Here’s a close-up of the right shoulder seam:

There is a horizontal line of some basting marks on the large flower motif. That is the point where it crosses the seam line onto the bodice back piece. This ended up being the only motif I saved to applique on the right shoulder.

And here is a close-up of left shoulder seam:

Again, I’ve retained just a little piece of the large flower motif that crossed onto the seam line (upper left of image where the horizontal basting line is).

And finally, here’s the bodice shoulders all sewn up and lookin’ pretty:

I still need to officially hand-sew down the lace motifs but the shoulder seams are pretty much done.

The next things I have to research for the bodice is:

Neckline Facing vs. Bias Facing
Sewing the bodice side-applique-seam (sans closure side)
Attaching the cap sleeves
Armhole Facing vs. Bias Binding
Potential closure methods
Additional bodice lining (still deciding)
Seam allowance treatments

Yikes! When I list it out all like this is feels like I’m so far away from completing this dress. I did manage to get some reading this evening on some of these topics so I have a bit of a head start on what my next steps will be. I’m projecting that I’ll tackle either the neckline seam next or the side seam (sans closure side).

The thing I’m most dreading on this dress is the ‘closure’ method. I highly dislike zippers on a good day, and I’m really going to have to research about what kind of zipper or other closure method I should use on this dress. If you guys have any thoughts to share on any of these topics or know of any helpful links, please don’t hesitate to post them up in the comments.

In: Sewing