fabric crisis
I SWEAR the fabric didn't look this red in the store.
I was hoping for a burgundy, but after I got it home, it turned out to be a bright cherry red. (with vaguely purplish and dark reddish stripes).
Is it too much bright red for a full-length chipao dress? What do you think of these instead?
1. is a less bright version of the same fabric (all of this fabric is kaffe fasset)
2. is really cute, matches what other people will be wearing at wedding, but the red might be too bright
3. very pretty, doesn't match other things at wedding at all (red flowers, blue dresses, etc)
bah collars
I made a muslin of the chipao a few weeks ago, and my wedding-dress-seamstress was nice enough to help me fit it. Mostly it was a few tweaks here and there -- take in the sides and hips (next time I'll ignore the book and not add all that extra ease when draping), take in darts a bit. Always nicer to take in than to let out :)
The main pain was that I'd draped the neckline too low for a chipao mandarin collar and it flopped all over the place. Like a funnel around my neck.
So I redid the neck/collar pattern (tip: drafting a mandaring collar is MUCH easier than draping it), and made a new mini-muslin of just the neck/armhole area.
It's still too big. Ugh.
I still need to take that front center neckline up half an inch or so. And the front rounded edge of the collar needs to slope into the center a lot more. (Right now it is more like a rounded 90degree corner).
I compared it with one of my Chinese-style shirts, and I'm going to just trace the pattern of that neckline to fix this. What a pain. Not going to bother making yet another muslin.