Glory530

I would be concerened about holes being left behind after removing all the straps and buckles, depending on how they are attached. Just cutting away a strap or two that is sewn into a seam would probably be ok, but these seam like they might need some pretty heavy modifications. Also the cutout in the back looks too large. The vertical expanding elastic slits that are in a lot of boots are ok, but I think I would say no to this one. I see you listed your size a few posts up, so I'll try to help out with some searching as well. Fortunately we'll see the best boot options and availability this time of year. Hang in there!

Very slow progress (I've been dealing with extremely painful tennis elbow in my dominant arm since early September), but I've finished the dress! Here's the materials I used: Black fabric: Rayon challis (black) from Fabric Wholesale Direct Maroon fabric: Rayon challis (burgundy) from Vogue Fabrics Zipper: Invisible separating zipper from Amazon A couple notes on the fabric: rayon challis frays SUPER easily, so French seams are KEY. But it's very comfortable and drapes and flows just like the dress in the comic, so I think it's a really good match for fabric type. Also, the burgundy fabric is not a perfectly exact match to the comic (it's just a tad darker), but it's probably closer that I could get trying to dye match exact and saves me a ton of stress. I say it's close enough! Here are the photos of the completed dress. Note: the cell phone camera doesn't capture colors exactly as they appear to my eyes, and the shot with the skirt panels in the air is a still from a video, so it's way off (but it was fun to take and looks cool). I'm going to be shooting submission pictures with the DLSR and studio lights, so those will be much better! There is a little gap between the two back skirt panels at the zipper, which was pretty unavoidable, but this will be hidden by the leather vest since the bottom goes below the waistline in the back.

Thank you! Hopefully they may be helpful for whoever stumbles upon them or at lest help me remember what I did should I need to reference back.

Major progress has been made! Since I completed the unitard, I made a duct tape dummy, created pattern slopers, created patterns for the dress, and made a muslin "practice" dress. The duct tape dummy was necessary, as I don't believe there is any dressform in the world that can be adjusted remotely close to my body shape. This was dirt cheap to create (plastic wrap + duct tape + fence post expanding foam) and didn't take much time (thank you to my husband for helping!). This dummy made taking measurements and fitting the slopers super easy. I learned how to create my slopers from the book How to Make Sewing Patterns by Don McCunn. The pattern drafting videos on Creative Bug were also very helpful. Basically what the slopers are are generic, fitted patterns that you can then use as a base for pretty much any pattern you want to create for yourself based on a series of measurements you take from you body (or duct tape dummy) and a pretty lengthy (at least for me since this was my first time) fitting process. The bodice and sleeve patterns were very simple modifications from the slopers - just add seam allowance and sleeve fullness. Then for the the skirt panels, I went off of a tutorial for a Hobbit-style full gathered skirt I found online that suggested a skirt circumference of 3 to 3.5 times your waist circumference. I made some panels based on this (panel width = (3 x waist circumference)/4) and sewed them to a makeshift belt to try on. The skirt looked a little too full and the panels too wide compared to the comic images, so I cut 4 inches off the width of each one and was pretty happy with the result. So that makes the final ratio of the skirt circumference to waist circumference 2.5. I made each panel long enough to go from my waist to almost the floor when barefoot so that there would be plenty of wiggle room for hemming. Before I make something that I developed myself, I like to do a test run on muslin to validate my pattern (or pattern modifications) and process. Yes, it took a full day yesterday and a few hours today to make a dress just for practice, but doing this brings my anxiety way down and my confidence up before going into the real thing. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out (except for looking like I belong on Little House on the Prairie), and I'm ready to start the final dress! Note: the bottom of the center back is a little funky and has a small gap because we just pinned it shut. This should be better on the final dress with the zipper.