Vintage Dress Restoration Project-Success!

The much anticipated pictures of my dress project have arrived!
I wanted to wear this to a dance later this week so I had a motivation to get to work on it and not let it languish in my sewing to do box..
The pictures of the finished dress and story of how I found it are below too!

The supports through the bodice were poking through their casings and the fabric was shredded in places.

I found some scrap fabric that was tough and canvas like -may have been the seat of an old folding chair. This was what I used to make a new casing for the supports. It was slow going and all done by hand, being careful not to go through to the front of the dress and avoiding the fraying areas.

There were also several seams where the mesh/lace like fabric on the outside was coming out of the seam and fraying.

I was able to fold them under and sew them back into the seams with the help of my bottle of permanent fabric glue to keep the fabric from fraying/disintegrating in my hands while I sewed it in.

Here it is!

and you probably want to know the story of this beauty.

Well, I found it on Craigslist believe it or not. A lady was having a yardsale for her stockpile of vintage treasures she had accumulated over the years from estate sales. I asked if I could come take a look at the clothes and, among other things, came out with this authentic vintage 1950s/60s dress!

What a find!