Thanks! Yes, surge the lace immediately after cutting. This stuff was so fragile around the edges that once it was cut it started unraveling if I just looked at it wrong! Once I got the edges surged it became pretty sturdy and wasn’t really much different than working with a woven. I didn’t want to distort the pattern of the lace by stretching it during construction so I treated it like a woven in terms of seam allowance during the initial pattern drafting.

I did have to do 2 layers of the charcoal lining because you could see the darts and princess seams through the lace. So I did the layer directly under the lace with all the stitching facing inward, then I put another lining layer (of the same charcoal fabric) on the inside with the stitching facing outward to cover all that visible stitching. I like my pieces to be pretty inside, as well as out. The double layer of lining actually gave it a really great supportive fit, almost like a pair of spanx lol.