Progress on ongoing Tara...

I'm back on track! I found the perfect fabric for the Tara dress---a silk? rayon? scarf from India that was passed on to me from a friend cleaning out her closet, and that I tried to get rid of about 5 times. Its HUGE, and it has a border print, its totally not my color, and I finally figured out what to do with it!

New skills so far: edgestitching, elastic casing, working with something that isn't cotton, working with a border print!

I've decided that my least favorite part of sewing- cutting-becomes my favorite part when I get ambitions with matching prints. Look at what is possible with complete mastery of this skill:



Ahhh...sublime. You can see how this kind of perfect symmetry mirrors the body, and becomes almost anatomical.

Or, done another way-from the Fall 2010 collection(posthumous)check out that waistcoaty thing--and sleeves...



I love it when pattern matching evolves from tidy, anal attention to detail into something greater than the sum of its parts. Some final Alexander McQueen eyecandy...




And now, back to reality...

Mistakes so far:
1) the waist on the front isn't lining up with the waist in the back. It wouldn't be a problem except the casing is a headache...and looks ridiculous...
Me and my sloppy cutting! Even after I figured it out, I decided to try to make it work instead of seam ripping, and now, It may well be too late!
2) the middle front is doing something weird. I'll post a pic. and show what I'm talking about. From my intuitions about fabric, it seemed like elastic casing would pull down and create bunching like this, but no one else from Frock by Friday seemed to have this problem:



What am I doing wrong?