Yes, PROGRESS has been made with Julia from FFVIII for those not paying attention... although I've been procrastinating on here for like two hours. Go figure. So, I bought the velvet and I got this black crepe satin, and they look absolutely KILLER together, even laying in a heap.
For about a week straight I'd been sitting on a pillow of one of our junk overflow rooms with the patterns laid out before me, staring at them, making calculations over and over for the same piece, and clutching my face wondering what I'd gotten into. The alterations are only easy in theory, as I'd quickly found out.
I admit, I wonder what Quistis would have been like, as I only had to add seams and therefore material, about 1"/seam so I had the freedom to let them out if I needed to. Unfortunately, with Julia I had to reshape the bodice of the dress almost entirely, and I cut it wrong so I only have a small margin of error. GO ME. But even with all the setbacks due to my undeniable lack of skill, it's going better than I expected. The basic shape of the dress is pinned together and basted in some parts, but I'm struggling severely with getting boob symmetry down. It's consistently lopsided, and the ridiculously deep pile of the fabric makes the velvet pop up. But I have months to work on it, my annoying perfectionist streak, and am DRIVEN (really this time!) on the promise that I'd have this at next ACen. And I have to perform some of my FFVIII sheet music book that I got for Christmas, even though I play and play and never get better. Ah well, c'est la vie. Maybe I'll have an update on this thing next year. Hah. XD I love playing through that book...