Online Sewing Class - What I Learned - Part I

Wow, so our Wedding Gowns 101 class was extremely helpful!  It turns out there's a lot of Iowa connections amongst the students, go Iowa!

Here's what I learned:

1) I shouldn't complain about my dress form, I should just learn how to adapt it to suit me better.
2) I shouldn't worry about breaking my tracing wheels all the time, I should just buy more.
3) In the future, don't bother washing or pressing silks before using them, if they are clean and not wrinkled.
4) A dress needs a foundation, and a body needs a foundation.  These are almost never one and the same.  If they are, it's extremely challenging.
5) You have to use white tracing paper for silks.  Here's one reason: since most tracing paper is wax free these days, it's sort of powdery.  If that powder rubs off on your fabric (easy to imagine it doing so), then you will have that on your good fabrics.  A major problem.  I am going to experiment with the white art store Saral tracing paper.  I think it's the same, actually, as the Saral tracing paper you get in the fabric shops.  All of the Saral is wax free, though.  But if it works, it works.
5.5) you can use mechanical pencil to help see the white lines on the white fabric, extremely lightly, if absolutely necessary.
6) Use sharpies to mark muslin adjustments, they don't bleed.  This is important when using your muslin as the pattern for the good fabric.
7) You can steam silks with a steamer.
8) I should actually make a muslin of the overdress.  I wasn't going to do that, as it is the same pattern as the dress.  I haven't yet come to terms with needing to make it.  I'm still thinking.  It might be useful for playing with the bustling, though.  And I can use the dress muslin to make the overdress muslin.  Hmmm....

So, I am going to go back to the second version of my foundation and wear my own foundation underneath.  Luckily I found the one I love (which I own in black) online in white, so that's a relief. 

More later!