Thanks everyone... and I'm sure your time will come jelbee... have you ever talked about it?
Anyway, I got the dress a few days ago, in a DHL package. First impressions:
The Good: Dress is properly made, boned, and lined. Plus it fits! Hooray!
The Neutral: When I tried it on, I thought "oh no! The length is wrong!". Then I thought "hang on, didn't I deliberately ask them to make it longer for a reason?" Went and got my petticoat, tried it on... length was perfect. Phew!
The Bad: I asked for a less shiny satin to be used, and the satin was just used inside out. Now, I wish they had told me this before, because I would have preferred the shiny look to the texture of the liner. Lesson learned... be careful what
you say in emails!
There are a few careless errors in the ruching at the front near the bottom, visible in the earlier pics posted here (which I may unpick and redo myself). I commented on this before, and was told they would come out after a good steaming. Nope.
That irritates me... when they have obviously spent so long making the build and the corsetry right, why let themselves down with a careless mistake which would have taken them 5 minutes to sort (and which will take me a lot longer to correct)?
The box pleats at the front aren't quite right, and I won't be able to correct that mistake because there isn't enough spare fabric. Basically, they are missing a central pleat in the middle of the skirt (visible in the earlier pics). I should
be able to correct the look of the pleating though, with minimum hassle... I just need a few liner stitches to make them pop properly, and then hot iron and a tiny spray of starch. It'll look fine.
MY FAULT: I was not prepared for how white the dress is. It is white white white. I looked at it, and thought... I can't use that for engagement shots! It looks a bit over-eager and bunny boiler (sort of "I've been waiting years for this and now
I'm going to wear a white dress ALL THE TIME"). OK... so I'll dye the dress with Dylon... now, there's no care label, but I assume it's polyester satin as most China dresses are. They say polyester can't be dyed at low temperatures (and I would not
recommend a high temp wash for polyester). But... what they say isn't strictly true... you can dye polyester with standard dye, it's just that the colour will be a lot lot paler on polyester. So I thought... perfect... all I want is a hint of
caramel, cream, or beige just to take the white edge off. Put it in to pre-wash at 40... and immediately a load of dark purple marks came up around the waist gathers... the pen marks which they have used to mark the seams, and which are supposed to come
out in the wash. These didn't... but they are only visible when the dress is wet, so I presume they must react with water. Anyway, I thought this was a seperate issue, so I shoved in a load of beigey dye... er... which reacted with the purple pen
marks to create a very light pastel pink. I quite like it, actually, but it's not the right colour for engagement shots. I think I can fix it though... I'll just use a pre-dye first, which I hope will remove the purple, and then re-dye to beige. The
dress is fine at 40 in the wash, which I suspected it would be... even though they claim that polyester is dry clean, my experience is that wellmade dresses are fine on a 40 delicate cycle (as are men's suits... put them inside a pillowcase for added
protection!).
So... I will come back to you in a few days with final pics, after I re-dye and make corrections!
