Birthday dress bodice progress…

The bodice of Simplicity 1802 (aka The Super Late Birthday Dress for 2012) has been complete since last week, then I ran into a little snag.

Looks good on Scarlett no? I have tried it on myself too 😉

The size chart suggested I should cut a size 16 but after looking at the finished measurements on the tissue pieces I ended up cutting a size 14. So. Much. Ease!

In general the fit is good, that bit of pulling under the bust is nothing, just how it’s sitting after I pinned the side seams, ignore that.

I love the colour and the piping and I am still really excited for the finished dress.

I’ll show you what you can’t see in this photo:

All the bodice shaping is built into the seaming of the front panels but it begins waaay too high, there is much gape-age and this weird baggy convex effect above my actual bust. This bodice is designed for a bust so high up that if I had an extra set of boobs on top of my real boobs it would fit perfectly!

I think my husband would be pleased too 😉

We also have armhole gape-age:

…and some pretty extreme back gape-age:

This photo makes my hand look gigantic and my dress form tiny!

Sigh…

It does fit though, apart from the gape-age (have I used that word enough yet?) and the unusually high boob issue. It can all be fixed, it just needs to be taken in at strategic places, this would be easy…except that we have piping to deal with…

So I have pinned out the excess, marking the new seam lines comes next then I can relocate the piping and stitch it back up. It won’t take long, it’s just super annoying!

Due to almost all of my family members being in various other places on Christmas Day we are having our Christmas dinner early this year, as in this Saturday. With work at the moment I can’t see this dress being finished for that, plus I want to get the rugby jersey out of the way this week instead.

Still, I need to set myself a bit of a goal, so I would like to be able to share it with you all by the following weekend, the 15th/16th – nothing particularly special happening that weekend, but I am sure I can convince Nerdy Hubby to take me out to dinner anyway 😉

Keep your fingers crossed for no more crazy fitting weirdness please.

I can wear it for the Christmas dinner on actual Christmas Day we are planning for Nerdy Husbands family at our house (our first Christmas at our very own house, exciting!) then I can start dress number 2, maybe that can be my New Years dress, not that I need any excuse for a new dress!

Pattern pyramid reminder: Have you left a comment here to be in the draw to win my selection of the Wellington Pattern Pyramids yet?

How about on one of the other fabulous Wellington bloggers blogs?

Nikki and Jo have their pyramids up and Joy and Kat each have TWO pyramids to give away. That’s 7 chances for you to win some fabulous vintage kitschy pattern goodness so hop on over quick and comment away 🙂

If you can’t enter the above due to you not having your own blog, don’t worry, on the weekend I realised I had just cracked 200, 000 hits so I will be doing some sort of give-away in celebration of that soon too, keep your eyes open…