Hi, we completed the fitting for Liz’s dress on schedule, I’d given myself one week to fit the bodice and a little under three weeks to make the dress itself.

It is surprising how you go into these projects with one thing in mind and at the end decide on something different.

In the end I made four bodices in total, the first one just proved what I had thought, that a FBA would be needed, it was also a little small round the waist, which I’ll come to in a minute.

I decided to add a 1inch FBA which made the side dart huge but as I was going to need the extra space across the waist I decide to rotate most of the extra into the underbust dart, otherwise I was going to end up with no shaping at all under the bust. Liz tried this one on Monday, the fit seemed almost perfect apart from some pooling at the center back at this point it didn’t have a zip in it so this was guess work.

As I was pretty happy with the fit at this point I decided to make up the bodice of ‘our’ choice, it was at this point I discovered that when I had traced off the front bodice piece I had missed off the cut on fold, oops. This explains why the original bodice had been way too small I had taken out 1 1/4 in out of the front.

So that week I then made up the bodice with a 1/2 FBA,

 put a zip in the one Liz had already tried on and take a 3/4 inch horizontal sliver out of the back 

and also made up the style I thought would look best.

Liz tried them all on and it turns out that the second bodice with the  center seam and the 1inch FBA looked the best, so that is the one we are going with.

More soon……