In the final segment of the "Karen Makes Peggy's Dress" series, host Speaker A and dressmaker Karen review the completed ballroom wedding dress for Peggy, focusing on its functional design for dancing and the intricate construction techniques used. Karen explains that the dress incorporates a separate inner garment with decorative straps, a snug grosgrain ribbon waistband, multiple layers of silk lining, underlining, and sheer chiffon, as well as a hidden corset piece to maintain modesty while preserving the dress’s flow. She details the challenges of managing four fabric layers, basting the linings before sewing, and ensuring the dress hangs correctly. The conversation also covers the insertion and pattern‑matching of godet panels, the use of satin stitching to finish edges without hemming, and the importance of the dress’s movement for a dancer. Karen mentions ancillary projects such as a floor cloth redo and anticipates future footage of Peggy wearing the dress at her wedding, noting concerns about shoes and floral arrangements. Throughout, the dialogue emphasizes the balance between aesthetic elegance and functional durability for ballroom dancing.
Chapters
All right, well, Karen, you know, to my eyes, this dress looks like it's done.
This dress is done.
The dress is done. The dress, Peggy's dress is done. Peggy's dress is done. All right, so Karen, you're dancing the dress. The people can't see the dress. They can see how well the dress moves, which is great.
The dress moves.
It's great. The dress moves. Why did you make the dress move so much?
Well, because it needs to function.
Because—
for a dancer.
Oh, Peggy's a dancer. That's right.
Peggy is a dancer.
People don't know that Peggy is a dancer. Peggy and Paul are ballroom dancing enthusiasts, and so they have a ballroom dancing dress. Can we show the— I really wanted to show people the construction. Of the inside of this dress.
Well, the construction is—
We need a little more light for that. How about coming over here by the window? There we go. A little back, even a little more towards— there we go.
So what we have is a little stuck zipper. No, what we have is is a separate garment inside that has a lot of stays in it. You know, it's not— it's not— don't go around so quickly here. It's not a garment that is intended to hold anything in or up, except the dress. The dress is not going to fall down. These are— these straps are decorative. They're not— they don't function for anything else.
So the dress will stay up of its own accord?
The dress will stay up if Peggy does a dip, if Peggy does, you know, a lot of— she could do a somersault in this dress.
I'd like to see her actually do a somersault in the dress.
And the dress ain't going anywhere.
We know Peggy, she might very well do a somersault in this.
Well, that's what I was concerned about. So, we had to make the dress— this little number in particular, this little waistband that gets— it fits snugly so that really the whole dress is supported right at the waist. You can see it's quite a low back.
Is that elastic?
Nope, nope, it's a grosgrain ribbon. And we got stays, and these things are just to hold, to hang the dress up.
And, and can we, um, do you mind showing the, um, the godets and how you ended up doing the inserts all the way down with the godets?
Sure.
Remember, because we did show people when they were just empty panels at one point, when you had inserted them the first time, and then had to go in and match the patterns.
This, if you can see the seam line, is the godet. Yeah. And we had to match that pattern. We had to, um, yeah, this, this whole thing, it was a little tricky. I had to cut it all out.
A little tricky, I like that.
And, um, and just tack it on, sew it on, and the, as well as the bottom.
Yeah, that bottom you had to sew all the end.
You had to sew. I did, I just did a little satin stitch along this edge. And just to attach that, which worked out well. I didn't have to hem it then.
What a blessing, you didn't have to hem it then. So, you know, the bodice, I mean, this is— everywhere I look there's something amazing in this dress. But I wanted to ask you, what was the toughest part of doing this dress? What was the hardest part? Toughest part for you?
I really think the toughest part is managing the fabric. It's a slippery fabric. It's— there's layers of fabric. There's actually 4 layers of fabric. There's 2 layers of silk lining, which is treated as one, but there are 2 layers in there.
That's right, we didn't want it to be too revealing, if I remember.
Yeah, we did have to be careful about that. Then there's a layer of underlining, and then this is the chiffon.
So managing the layers of fabric was—
Then there was this whole thing.
That's another thing that had to be inserted, kind of a corset piece.
The corset piece, which normally gets inserted between the underlining and the lining, but in this case, since this is so sheer, I wanted the lining right underneath this as well. So I didn't want all these seams to show through, and they would have. So that was just a little unusual.
So managing the layers of fabric, which you really had to sort sort of design yourself.
Well, it's not, it's just the really constructing.
Yeah, you had to design the construction of the dress, really.
Because all of the, like the lining had to be, the two layers had to be basted together before any sewing was done. The underlining and this fabric had to be basted together before any sewing was done. Otherwise it would shift.
It would shift.
It would shift and it wouldn't hang right. Just getting the thing to hang right was probably the most difficult thing.
Getting it to hang right. Well, we're going to— now of course this is a wedding dress, so we can't show people— I love the way you make it dance. We can't show people this dress on Peggy until the actual wedding.
I'll bet she would.
Do you think Peggy would allow a video to be made of her before the wedding with the dress? Because we're getting lots of requests, you know.
No, what I was, what I was going to say is that I'll bet Peggy would allow this to go on video.
At the wedding itself.
At least at the wedding.
Oh, we're gonna have footage of Peggy wearing this dress.
No question about about that. And I really want to see what sort of flowers she gets with it.
Yes, and the shoes are now a big concern, I understand.
So that's— you know, shoes can be difficult from season to season. They have to feel right.
Well, there's plenty more. Your shoes don't exactly go well at all with this dress right at the moment.
No.
And what is this other thing that's over here? I see this here, you're stepping on this other thing. Well, that's another project. We'll have to just tell people a little bit about what that is, and then maybe we'll show you working on this one as well.
This will be, um, it's a floor cloth but it will be a redo of this floor cloth. This is the before, and we'll show you the after.
Oh good, this is the before of the floor cloth. Well, okay, next time we see this dress, it's going to be on—
on Peggy.
Miss Peggy.
So I can't wait either. She hasn't tried it on yet after it's finished. There's also a little shrug to go with it. It's just made of this white fabric, so she'll look like a cloud.
