Finished dress!

The dress is finished! Here is a photo of it:
Sorry for the total mess in the background. This photo was taken shortly before we left, so the debris that was created by six girls getting ready in one college dorm room was still scattered all around. However, this is the photo I have that shows off the dress the best.

I am so, so pleased with how this dress turned out. I think this may be my favorite thing I've ever sewn. I have so many lovely pictures that I could post. I will be putting up a couple more posts in the next week or so about my accessories, which are mostly handmade, so you will have to deal with more photos, but I will just leave you with a shot of me and my boyfriend for now:

Making progress

Well, I have only got about 7 steps left in this dress. Of course, the last step in any dress is always "Hem the darn thing," which usually takes me about as long as the rest of the work, but serious progress is definitely being made. I never did find piece 8, and there don't seem to be many people out there with this dress pattern, so I made up piece 8. I traced the shape of the side seams off piece 6, and then added many (many many) inches so that I could be sure that it wouldn't be too small. After all, I can always make it smaller. Last night I wrapped the skirt around myself. It easily goes around my waist and overlaps four inches--and this is with my sweater on. So it's certainly not too small!

In other news, I changed my mind about the color of the sash. I happened to be out shoe shopping with my mother, and she suggested we go look for a pair of shoes to wear, as she wasn't a fan of the shoes I'd chosen from what I already had. We went, among other places, to David's Bridal, and found a shoe from their clearance rack that I really liked. It's one of their dyeable shoes. I had originally planned to buy dye from the craft store and dye them myself, but when I discovered that David's Bridal only charges $4 for a dye job, I figured I would just let them do it. However, I wasn't a big fan of their pinks, so instead I decided on a light turquoise color called "Mermaid." We then went to the craft store and found a ribbon the same color to use as a sash, and also some beads, which my little sister has volunteered to make into a necklace for me.

I feel terribly spend-thrift for buying custom dyed shoes, but even with the dye job the shoes only cost about $30. That is a little more than I had planned to spend, but I think I'll be able to wear them again fairly easily.