Starting to Come Together

The bodice and upper skirt layers of Miho's gown are sewn together...

I'm mostly happy with how it's coming along.  The bodice pattern will still need some additional tweaking to make it fit even better.

The band at the waist ended up a bit too bulky-looking for my taste, but there's 18 layers of fabric in there, so I guess it couldn't be avoided.  I'll need to figure out a way to embellish it to hide it....

I'm in the process of beading the edge of the overskirt..

The lace fabric for the underskirt layer won't have the nice scalloped, finished edge, as the upper lace layer, so I found some matching light green lace for that edge.

There isn't enough lace for the full length underskirt, which means fitting the lace to matching coloured tulle at the top.  And that means I need a solid turquoise underskirt so the difference between the lace and tulle layer isn't too obvious.  The waistband is already way too bulky, so I can't make an underskirt with the last skirt layers that goes up to her waist. It would look even bulkier. So I'm going to make the final three or four skirt layers fit onto their own band, which I will then hand stitch onto the bottom of the existing waistband, thus adding nothing to the fit of the bodice.  I've pleated the innermost skirt onto the second waistband....

And finally, for those who consider me a 'sewing goddess', whose work is alway perfect, here's a little reality check.  I make mistakes too.  I totally forgot to make sure the two satin border ends on the bottom edge of the top tricot overskirt, were the same width before I did the top stitching on the front. Forgot to check they were the same.  So they ended up different widths after I could no longer do anything about it.  I just hope the embellishments on the back of the gown will hide it.