Trim Revisited

The placket  on my princess line slip is done for better or worse, and I am down to the finishing touches.  First of all, although the pleated flounce is one of my favorite details of this pattern, I am going to skip it for this muslin. I am quite sure that my cheapo poly cotton won’t hold a crease for pleats, and frankly, I just don’t want to spend waste the time on something that can’t be done well. I will note that the lengths that we are told to cut for the flounce seem odd.  The directions say to cut one 45.75” length, and three 36.75” lengths.  The longest length is just a bit wider than most fabric allows.  It makes more sense to me to cut four equal pieces (39" each).  If there is a functional reason for the original measurements, I sure can’t figure it out. 

wrong side of flounce

For my gathered flounce I calculated equal strips that equal 2x the bottom of the slip for a nicely gathered flounce. A gathered flounce takes considerably less fabric than a pleated one. (It is a good thing I decided on gathering, because I ran out of fabric, and couldn’t have eked out a pleated flounce.)  I stitched my flounce with wrong sides together so that the raw edges came on the front of the garment, where it could be covered by trim. This leaves a nicely finished underside.

junky (but pretty) trim

 My slip is looking pretty, and it fits my model like a glove, except that the front neckline has quite a bit of floppy-ness. The interesting angled seams at the top function as darts, but there is still excess ease. The beading specified for trim along the top edge is obviously partly for function to draw in the fullness. Even though I had planned to forego adding any lace to my muslin for economy's sake, I decided to at least add beading along the top edge of the bodice for fit. And if I do that, might as well also add beading and ribbon along the flounce seam to cover the raw edges as on the original drawing. And as long as I am doing that…..Whoa!—tempting though it is, I still don’t want to waste yards of precious lace on the muslin. I have enough cheap poor-quality embroidered beading to finish the neckline and flounce seam. I don’t know where it came from, but like the poly-sleaze fabric used for the body of the slip, I would not ever use it for a “good” garment.This is a perfect use for it. I also have cheapy domestic entredeaux that I got at closeout price from a chain store years ago, and some equally junky (though at least it's 100% cotton) craft-quality Venice lace. I’ll use these to make my muslin look prettier, and give a bit of an idea of what a nice garment could look like. I’ve marked the other lace placement lines with basting so that I can show how they fall on a real body when I take photos of the muslin being modeled.

bodice with trim and thread-traced lace placement lines