My niece Manon's Prom dress

Spent a couple of weekends helping my niece Manon with her Prom dress! This is the only photo I have so I will be asking Manon for a photo of the finished dress for the post.  It was a white satin and as you can see the pattern has such a pretty bodice.  The bodice was made of two layers and the lining and was probably the most time consuming part of the pattern.  Manon has been sewing for about 3 years - she is 16 now and I feel she made a beautiful job of the bodice.

Firstly Manon thought she would make a gathered skirt into it, so she cut that out.  Later she decided that she would like a straight fitted long skirt.  The pattern went to knee length for the fitted dress but I said it would be fine we could just measure down and then insert a back split into the pattern so that she could walk in it.

I was making dinner when Manon got started on cutting out the straight skirt pattern from the gathered one she had already cut out, so I discussed how to go ahead and then moved back into the kitchen.  I poked my head around the door about 5 minutes later to see how Manon was getting on to see her just cutting out the skirt at knee length!!  She turned towards me and must have seen the look of horror on my face, then turned back to the fabric and groaned "Oh no, I knew I would mess this dress up!"  Poor lass - some time of consolation later - we agreed that I would go to the shop on Monday - post the fabric to Manon for her to cut out and that she would bring the dress to France for the long weekend away we were all having in Le Mans so that we could finish it, I would be transporting my sewing machine to the self catering gite we were all staying in!!  The shop had 1.1metres of the fabric left, the question was - would it be enough!?

In the end, I believe Manon would have liked it a bit longer but she had a lovely pair of shoes to show and she looked really stunning!