Soo, after I've already posted the finished dress, here are the last WIP and inner construction photos: Finished catch-stitching the facingto the underlining:

waist seam:

Finished center-back edges:

ready for the zipper!

waist-stay:

half-finished hand-picked zipper:

It was really worth hand-sewing! It looks much nicer than any machine-sewed zipper I ever inserted. And the stitches are pretty much invisible :)

inside views:

New techniques I learned during this project:

• draft a fitted bodice pattern
• how to underline (with the help of Tasia's Tutorial)
• how to understitch facing (again, with the help of Tasia)
• catch-stitch facing
• french-seams
• gathering with 2 lines of stitching (used to only stitch 1 line and gather, it's so much better with 2, a lot more evenly spaced)
• properly prepping the center back seam for the zipper (cleanest back-seam edges I ever had!)
• hand-pick a zipper

Things that could've turned out better:

• back-neckline could've been about 2 inches deeper (but I'd rather have it too high than too deep with the bra strap showing)
• I used blue threads to gather, thinking it would be easier to take them out that way, but I ended up not taking them out because it would've taken forever. So I should have used white thread. This doesn't bother me so much though.
• I made the waist-stay tighter than the waistline of the dress, which makes the part of the dress at the back that's not attached to the waist stay stick out. Have to correct this (make another, looser hook on the waist stay)

But I'm happy with how the dress turned out :) And I can cross another project off my Mad Girls List!

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