Crafty Corner: "Briar Rose" Dress | Part Two

Briar Rose, Part One

As Officer Bill Gannon (Harry Morgan) once said, “Like the Pilgrims, we’re making a little progress.” (Name that line!)

This afternoon, I dug out my bodice mock-up for this project and laid out the motifs...quickly realizing my original design wasn’t going to work. See, the dress mock-up I used before is Empire-waisted, whereas the actual dress will be princess-seamed, which made placement a bit difficult. I felt that having two lines of trim down the center-front panel would look too busy with the vines covering the seams, but leaving it out made the middle look bare:

So I played around with a couple different options, once again adding white leaves as place-holders, since I ran out of greens. I also ran out of whites eventually, as you’ll see. But it gives a general idea of the new designs...and how many more leaves I’ll need to make....

Option 1: V-neck and pointed waist trimmed with Irish crochet beading; rose-vines all-over, w/most embellishment in center-front.

I think my idea here was to have a vine running more or less up the middle, snaking its way between the main flowers, then branching off at the Full-blown Rose at the point of the neckline, ending with a Rosebut at the top of each shoulder, and one vine branching off along the side where those random white leaves are. I was trying to keep that large leaf grouping that went along the French dart on the dress mock-up. The Full-blown Roses at the waist will just have a small stem running up between the leaflets.

Option 2: Similar to #1, but with Beading along neckline and princess-seams (the latter extending to hem, perpendicular to hem-trim). Leaf groupings at sides and shoulder-seams.

As you can see, I ran out of leaves and trim, so you’ll just have to imagine the design on the right side of the bodice being mirrored on the left.

This of course means making more leaflets, and one more Rosebud. Which is fine...only I’m running low on the bright-pink thread for the scalloped edge, and I can’t seem to find it online (and of course I can’t go thrifting, either).

I’ll keep looking....

Initially, I thought this incarnation to be my favorite, as it certainly fills up the blank spaces on the sides...but looking at the simplicity of the first picture, this one feels a bit too crowded. On the plus side, having the trim run vertically all the way down will be potentially more flattering than adding a false waist. So I’ll have to play with it some more....