Bullion Wrap Dress Completed!

Finally, after just over a year, it's finished! The Bullion Wrap Dress arrived on my doorstep in June of 2010 and I've been working it on and off ever since. If you remember, I had some issues with the bullion flowers puckering, but after a reader, Robin Hart, pointed out I was taking too small a stitch I took quite a few out and redid them. Thanks, Robin!

The certainly do look a lot better!


Now for the likes and dislikes:

The embroidered bullion flowers and the scallop edging are lovely, but extremely time consuming. I made the dress a bit longer and skipped making the panties, just because I like long dresses. The fabric is a fine baby lined pique which handles like a dream. It also wrinkles just by my looking at it. My daughter isn't much of an ironer, so I doubt this dress will get worn too often. Or else she will just put it on her daughter and she will look like a little ragamuffin. What makes the ironing worse is that it needs to be ironed over a padded surface so the high relief bullion flowers will since into the padding and the cloth around it will come out smooth. I use a four layer pad of cotton batting, which works so much better than a towel.

I made the scallops by machine first, describing how I came up with it in the same post in which I complained about my bunchy bullions. This worked like a charm. I will do this from now on whenever I make a scalloped edge. I just have to make sure I feed the fabric through the machine dogs evenly or the scallops will be skewed.

The instructions for constructing the dress aren't the best. I had to figure out how to sew in the ties myself, and add snaps to keep the inside of the dress together. As I was putting it together, I discovered that I wasn't finished after all!

I still had a long row of scallops left to work. I couldn't find the fabric piece with my notes, but luckily I had posted the stitch information so was able to retrieve it. I have really got to start a better note system. This week I should get most of this done while riding in my carpool, but if not, I can finish before I see her.

Later this month we will be visiting my daughter so my granddaughter will have her new dress. I hope to get pictures and will post them when I get back. As I'm busy with my niece's baby shower this coming Saturday and leaving for vacation three days later, I won't be posting too much until I get back. And I've promised my son that my highest priority will be his quilt!

Have a great week!