Bead auditions

Hello, everyone.

This is one of the long series of R's dress posts, specifically some "audition" pictures of the redone lace yoke.

The new yoke has a new underlining fabric: Sewin' Sheer. It's a beige sheer knit with lots of stability and very little weight. Not stiff, but doesn't have the urge to stretch, nor the urge to let the fabric dissolve on narrow bias bits like the poly organza did.

Here it is assembled at the shoulder seams, with half of the needed hidden dart included there, and with the organza bias half-sewn in place, then pinned into its final placement. I'm tryng out ideas for a sprinkle or a row of subtle beads that will bring a bit of sparkle to the dress and also distract the eye from the stitching that will seal down the bias strip on the underside of the bodice. (Just letting it be there and hoping nobody notices the little line is still in the running here. But with the darker shade of the Sewin' Sheer compared to the former ivory organza, I'm not nuts with letting the row of stitiching just be there. The match is great with the lace, but will show wherever there is an opening in the pattern. And it's lace! The very definition of the fabric is "lots of little holes.")

Overview of the bodice with spaced-out clear iridescent beads on the proposed stitching line.
(Not proposed, really, the line of stitches has to be there.)
They're almost invisible, but light will catch and sparkle from them.

Close-up: The center of the front, with a the same size 11 beads along where the line of stitching would be.

The beads here--towards the right--are more of a line than a sprinkle.

Trying out some size 8 pearly-white beads in between the transparent size 11's.
Also a closer look at the line in the previous picture.

 The size 8 beads are very close (in size, but not really in shape) to 3mm perles, which there are still a couple hundred on hand from DD1's wedding dress a couple of years back. And a line of perles on this edge--the color is a good match--is very much in consideration.

With some clear 4mm bicone beads here-n-there. A line of the size 11 with interspaced bicones maybe?

The bicones would add some discreet sparkle, and they don't stick out noticeably from the dress fabric.

I am not auditioning sequins--impossible to dry clean--nor the rhinestones that were used in the belt tulip ornament. (That was solidly embroidered tulips in mostly the clear beads and some two-cut beads, with accents of perles and the rhinestones and a sequin or three. But the belt is removable before the dress goes to the cleaners. And the belt could, if absolutely necessary, take a bath in a pan of warm water and maybe a drop of soap to clean if contingencies should happen to it. Followed of course by two or three rinse dips.) And I don't think R is a loads-of-sequins kind of girl.

One of the changes with the new, more stable underlining is the loss of the discreet sparkle that the ivory organza had. The lace now will seem much more like it's on its own at the top of the dress. Of course, the lace is still a perfect match for the rest of the dress.

Maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing. We're down to the wire now on this project, so possibly the only answer that is true is to lay off the "analysis paralysis" and finish already.