My Prairie Dress Progress

On Tuesday, I did alot more than think about my prairie dress. I put the old one on and saw hot poorly fitted it was. I went on to alter it to fit me. I feel blessed to have learned what I have over this past year in making alterations and drafting changes.

When I tried last year’s dress on, I saw that while the dress fitted in the waist, I was swimming in the upper bodice and arms. That is my figure. I don’t have curves. I am practically straight up and down. I had made the dress to fit my waist and didn’t fit the rest of it to me because I didn’t know how.

After the revealing try-on, I traced all the pattern pieces. I altered the pieces to fit my dimensions. I took 1-1/2 inches of the shoulder span to raise the shoulder point. I raised the underarm point by 1 inch. I took in the bodice at the underarm point a total of 4 inches around and then tapered that to the existing waist.

You can see some of those changes on this newly drafted bodice, except that I hadn’t taken it in around the chest as much at this point.

I also made the waistband 2 inches wide instead of 1-1/4 inches. I took off tons of fullness in the arms, though I don’t even remember how much. Maybe like 6 inches total circumference gone.

I stayed up late on Tuesday night and got much of the dress constructed. I haven’t added the sleeves yet, but the bodice fits great. I am so excited about having made these alterations myself — mostly because I understood the process. I only hope that when I put the sleeves in, I don’t find a big problem that I didn’t foresee for whatever reason.

This weekend, Jeff will be working all weekend, so it will be me and the kids. I hope they’ll play hard so I can sew hard.