Rachel's Wedding Dress - Part 2

Once I had an idea of what Rachel wanted for the bodice, it was time to drape. I got my trusty mannequin and put style tape on "her" where the seams would be. Here is the front:

And here is the back:
Then I draped the pieces. I just took a photo of the front.
It's hard to see the individually draped pieces, but you can see some of the style tape underneath. Once the pieces were draped, I took them off the mannequin and created the paper pattern.

Then I took some old fabric I had lying around, and made the muslin, or mock up of the bodice. Note that the colors are pretty terrible, but the fabric worked for my purposes. Rachel is wearing it below in the photo, along with the skirt from the original dress. We are going to use the lace from the original bodice wherever you see the pink lace below, so for the sleeves and an overlay for the sides of the bodice. Underneath the lace overlay on the side and for the center front and back of the bodice we will use a bright white silk to match the dress. We're also going to replace the lining of the skirt, as the fabric has yellowed a bit.


As you can see, the bodice hits a little higher than we wanted (the mannequin's torso was not quite as long as Rachel's), so we decided to make it longer so that the skirt would hit a little lower than the waist. Otherwise, it would be too short for her. Rachel also wanted the top of the front to hit a little lower (in true Marie Antoinette style) which you can see by the chalk marks. We also agreed that the armhole should be a little more open so her arm would be able to move more freely.

I took a bunch of notes and told her I would make changes and recut another mockup.