the dress!

so i spent some time finishing up a few things on my dress tonight.  yeah, i'm being last minute about it, but whatever.  as long as it's done by friday, that's all that matters.  anyway, this is what the dress looked like to start with: 

felt a little bit like vanna white there, but whatever.  i needed a way to show off what the dress looked like before i did anything.  as you can see, it's a spaghetti strap with an open chest.   you may also notice that it looks a bit loose at the top.  that's because i couldn't zip it all the way because my boobs are too damn big.  so that was the challenge.  fix the front and fix the back.  the front was the easy part.

i just cut the straps at the  back to make it into a halter top.  it had these thin little straps that the see through material was attached to, so i just removed those completely.  the dress came with this little shawl thing that was made of the same see through material, so i used that to make the neck piece and fill in the chest.  the back was a bit trickier, but not too complicated.

it started as a zip up.  if you look close, you can see where i drew faint little circles.  these were cut out with an x-acto and using a $3 eyelet kit, replaced with nickle grommets, six on each side.  this way i could still zip the bottom part, and lace up the top part to give a better fit.  plus corset backs just look prettier anyway.

<-- one side done

                     both sides done -->

over all, i'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  you'll noticed i laced it so it ties at the bottom.  this is because i am dressing by myself this year and don't have anyone to help tie me in.  and from lots of experience with tying my own bodice, i've learned a few tricks.  having all the laces in a downward direction with a tie at the bottom makes it much easier to adjust alone.  there are fancier ways to do the lacing, but they are way harder to adjust behind your back.  oh and speaking of behind your back, it's really, really hard to take a picture of behind your own back.

just saying.  anyway, that's all for tonight, still adding details to it, but i might not have a chance to post more pics before blizzcon.  which is in three days.  omg i still have so much to do.