Salsa party dresses follow up Part II: One Down, One to go!

Please forgive me, since my initial Salsa party dress post things have been CRAZY!!!! So crazy I've been unable to visit you Guys in blog land like I've been wanting to. I've got to catch up with you and your projects!!!!

Nevertheless, things are moving right along and minus a few hiccups I'm making good timing with sewing the 2 dresses I describe in my initial post. As mentioned in that post, I have the extreme honor of sewing a Birthday party dress for a friend/co-worker  who will be celebrating her 40th bday at a Salsa themed party. I'll also be making my dress for the party. Well on last week I made a muslin (sample dress) for my client and we had a fitting which only required minor tweaks. Here's the dress. Unfortunately I'm not into putting pics of my clients in muslin's on my blog. Seriously, I'm only allowed to embarrass myself like that! LOL! Remember this is the pattern....

Here's the muslin (sample dress for fitting)...

 
The dress bust is a little large since it's 2 cup sizes larger than that of my dressform. My friend is a size 36 DD in the bust so that required me adding about 2" to the bust length to ensure the midriff fell at the base of her bust. That was all it took and the dress fit perfectly. Since I lengthened the front bodice I did the same for the back. But after further inspection notice she was short waisted in the back and I'd have to go and pinch out some of that length in the bodice back and midriff piece. Other than those 2 things the muslin looked great and the dress was a cinch to put together. I did sew 2 versions for myself not so long ago:)

I proceeded to cut out the actual fabric, assemble the dress, and schedule another fitting with my friend. The fitting went well and in addition to the 2 alterations above I realized that the fabric was a bit more stretchier than the muslin fabric so I'd need to take out an 1" in the upper bodice side seams. The dress is currently on my cutting table being operated on.....I mean altered. Here it is here.....

And I hope to be done with it in the next day. (Exhales, wiping sweat off brow). I'm happy that things are working out great. But on to the drama--you know there is anytime you have an important project going on. It seems I didn't have any major issue with my friend's dress (knocking on wood) but I had a few issues with my own. Remember, I wanted to make this dress......

Well I did---in muslin first. And boy did it turn out be a cutie! Please trust me on that. It's hard to tell from the pic, especially since unbleached cotton never really makes any design look attractive. But here it is....

Remember the dress looked like this....

Although this dress wasn't super easy to make it was pretty straightforward.. It had alot of steps and required tons of pleating but the neat design made it well worth it. The only problem is that the way the dress is made, you couldn't possibly lift your arms in it. It's not made for those maneuvers. The bodice is described as close fitting and the way it is cinched in right under the bust along with the sleeve design made it difficult to lift my arms. I recall reading this in another reviewer's post. Well it's a Salsa themed party and I hope to be doing alot of twirling (or trying to learn how rather) and didn't want the dress to inhibit this. So I had to find another dress---and STAT!!!!

So I searched..... And searched.......Searched some more! Went through all of my patterns and kept searching. Then I stumbled upon a pattern I'd attempted to make earlier but with the wrong type of fabric. Well I abandoned the project. But after much thinking realized this style would make for an alluring party dress. It turned out to be Simplicity 2406 view B--the one being modeled.

Then I had to turn my attention to finding the perfect fabric. I nearly drove myself MAD---seriously!!!  After MUCH searching and I mean MUCH--I finally stumbled on the RIGHT fabric for it. There were alot of suggested fabrics on the pattern envelope but I wanted a specific effect. I didn't want to make the dress out of charmeuse like I orinigally intended with Vogue 1207 (my original dress pick) since I wanted the dress to have less shine and more volume. I stumbled on a fabric at Jo-Ann's that had the right amount of weight and some great colors. I'm keeping it a secret for now. I'll reveal shortly.

Ok, that's it for now. I've got alterations and need to cut and sew my dress. Lots of work but I'm nearly half way there and am not worried too much.  So enough about me, what's been going on with you? Have any HUGE projects lately taking up your time?