Vintage Dream Part II

Back in October when I moved, I wrote a post about some amazing things I found in a box in our attic. The most amazing was a 1920s flapper dress. As you may have read in my previous post, I had all kinds of glorious thoughts of laundering the dress and fixing it up. Well, after letting the dress air out for the past few months and getting numerous second opinions, I have come to the conclusion that it is beyond repair and too delicate to wash.

So my next step is to try and make a pattern from the dress so I can reconstruct it. I can't bear to take it apart. I even sat down with seam ripper in hand and got physically ill when I got close to the dress with it. I feel like I am ripping into a piece of someone's personal history...

I figure I have 2 options:
1. Lay the dress flat and trace around the major pieces and guesstimate on the others by sight.
2. Try and find a pattern (vintage or modern) that is similar and modify the pattern.

Either way I am looking at numerous mock-ups to make sure I get it right. Unless someone else has a better suggestion... anyone?

BTW, there are more pics of this dress on my flickr account.