down to the wire

The family had arrived in town and Mom had come over to help me finish up. The hooding ceremony was at 1:30pm. It quickly became obvious that there was no way the gown would be finished completely for the ceremony, but we were willing to tack it together enough to make it through.

I basted in the yoke lining and left the collar sections unclipped because I could see that they were going to need some more attention. We threw the robe on and marked to sleeve length and hem line. Mom turned up the sleeves while I sewed in the front zipper. I managed to get the zipper sandwiched between the lining and the front so that it was fully enclosed.

We were working as fast as we could:


I basted the lining to the front and front collar down to the section of the front opening that was not involved in the zipper (very sloppily).

Then, we broke out the packing tape. I had to get changed and my mom threw on her dress and started taping up the hem:


My mom tacked down the yoke lining and finished taping pu the hem while we were in the car on the way to the hooding ceremony. It was pretty excellent. The cosmetic underpinnings held for the few hours of the ceremony and soon we were at the reception, showing off our new hoods: