Wedding dress

side view of bodice

waist to bust dart trimmed

Returning to the wedding dress construction. It might be a little hard to see the actual progression here but I will try to explain it. In the first photo I have draped the lace onto the dress form over the foundation of the bodice which has been sewn from three layers of fabric--the silk cotton lawn over a sturdy base of cotton acetate, which gives the same appearance as the lawn over the bemberg skirt. The bodice is lined with bemberg with a seam along the neck edge. Shaping of the bodice foundation is from side bust and waist to bust darts. You can see where the shaping of the lace comes into play at the side bust dart and waist to bust darts. Following the design of the lace, I trimmed around the motifs and overlapped them, lots of pinning, then free motion stitching along the edges of the lace motifs  to hold it all into place. This way there are no obvious straight line darts on the lace layer. This a technique I saw in a Threads magazine (my favorite sewing mag) article written by Susan Khalje several years ago. Hope I have spelled her name correctly.  
 If you have any questions please do not hesitate to ask.