Making a wedding dress part 3 - draping lace

Unlike the main dress, I did take some photos of me draping the lace parts of the dress at the design stage. Draping is a bit of an inexact science at the best of times, unless your finished garment is going to be made of something very similar to the calico, but with lace, like with stretch fabric, you have a strong chance that the fashion fabric is going to behave in a very different way, especially in terms of stretch.
I got some very cheap polyester lace from my local fabric shop, it was about £1.99 per metre. What I initially wanted to do was to cut the whole top of the bodice from one piece - so I started at centre back

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and draped round back to centre back

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You can see on the right I have cut the lace down to about where I want it, and the plan is for a grown on cap sleeve. But wait! could I cut all the lace bit (including the gathered bit over the busy) as one?

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not sure if I like that.
I could try a set in sleeve...

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What I eventually decide to do is to have the top of the bodice cut as one, with a gathered section over the bust and upper back, and I leave the choice of sleeves for S to decide on (although I'm confident she will prefer the grown on butterfly style)

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Close up of the gathering at the bust

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Next to do was to play around with the smocking and overdress. This is a pretty long post so I'll go on to a new post but I will do it right away!!