Alice Um dress Progress

Progress report! Last time, the base dress was finished.

And the tutu was done.

Next came the bustle or over skirt. Alice has a striped overskirt on top of the tutu, presumably attached to the striped bodice. I measured out a rectangle that, when gathered, would find around the waist of the dress.

 I then had to make a ruffle to go around the perimeter, and around the bodice. 

This ruffle was easy to make, though time consuming. Basically you cut a lot of long rectangles of material, and hem the edges. I chose to double turn all the edges to prevent fraying. Once you have one long strip of fabric, you make a ruffle by sewing along the edge of the strip, using your longest stitch length and the highest tension setting on your machine. Like magic, the fabric will become ruffled.

Once i had a long enough ruffle, I pinned it to the rectangle of cloth, and sewed it on.

This hasn't been sewn yet, just pinned to see what it would look like. I added the red ruffle before I started the striped ruffles. I loosely pleated a strip of cloth and sewed it around the top of the bodice.

I didn't sew down the ruffle on the bodice: that was saved for last. Instead, I sewed a long black ribbon along the sewn edge of the ruffle, which hid the stitches. Then I gathered the bustle and sewed it to the dress. The bustle is attached all the way round except for the front panel near the side zip: that is held in placed with a snap fastener. The ruffle of the bodice was hand sewn to make sure it looked neat. 

There's still work to be done, such as bustling the over skirt, sewing the ruffle on to the back of the dress to make a sleeves, adding the black hearts to the dress, and making the black and red arm band, and the shoes. But the main portion is almost done!