Emergency Evening Dress day 1

Fabric buying day.  There is a Fabricland in Bristol, but I’ve never noticed any particularly inspiring evening fabrics  when I’ve been there.  Another hour’s Googling and I found Cloth of Gold in Royal Wooton Basset which isn’t too far away.  She specialises in bridal and evening fabrics and stocks the big 5 patterns.

When I got there I checked the Vogue pattern book just to make sure my pattern was included, but fell in love with this:

That’s more like it!

Vogue 2962  Lined halter dress in two lengths, gathered upper bodice with fitted lower bodice around midriff.  Skirt gathered into waistline seam.  Back buttons, loops and snap closures.

No boning, nothing on the pattern about “no provision for above waist adjustment”, the skirt is straight panels and sod the buttons, I’ll use a zip.  The pattern says the back length for the short version is 47 1/2 inches.  Since I’m only 5′ tall the fabric requirements for the short length should do me.

I also found fabric.

It’s really difficult to photograph, but it’s a violet crinkle-effect polyester woven through with a green metallic thread so in some lights it’s green, in some it’s violet and sometimes it’s a silvery grey.  I also bought matching violet lining fabric.

Once home, I cut out the pattern and tissue fitted it.  I cut the size 12 and removed 1 inch from both the upper and lower bodice and 5″ from the length of the hem for the long version.  Then I laid out the lining material to cut that out.  I’ll use the lining as a muslin to check the fit.

First problem – I can’t fit the pattern onto the lining fabric!  The skirt is about 6 metres wide – and I don’t have enough fabric to cut out both sides of the back skirt.  Eventually, after much fiddling and swearing, I worked out that I had enough lining to cut one side of the back skirt as four narrower panels and sew then together.

Dinner was very late and I’m now worried that I won’t have enough of my main fabric.