Birth Of A Dress Part II

While the bread maker does its job and yet another day passes in the absence of sunlight, the tale of the dress from hell continues.

Front and back pattern pieces pinned to fabric and cut out. Having sewn the back and side seams together, the lack of instructions on how to drape, pleat and fit them became more and more clear while the actual process on how to manage was still hiding in the darkness of a slightly confused mind.

In the top right corner you can see some flesh coloured pieces of fabric that  is the birth of a  cloth doll. One needs something to take the mind off sewing now and then ;o)

Pondering how to continue, hooks and eyes were sewn to the vest and that took most part of a day to finish. Ta-da!

Also, being I have a lot of this fabric I thought starting a second dress was a splendid way of postponing having to deal with the problems of constructing the first one ;-) Therefor I now have the beginning of a Regency gown in the making as well!

Jane Austen - here I come!

As did my mother one day. After the initial oh's and ah's she said she thought I might have it finished by summer - if ever. To those as weak in faith I say, grant me one more week and you shall be astounded! ;o)

It has been quite some time since practicing my skills in pleating. Knife pleats, box pleats, Watteau pleats and what all was nothing but faint memories, and since I wanted progress I pleated away, found it to look passable and so went on to stitch them and add the strip to the neckline to make it neat looking. 

Yes, I did try it on several times but there’s a certain difficulty in seeing quite what things look like from behind, so after attaching the dress to the vest I noticed the fall in the back was completely wrong.
Nothing to do but to undo the past days work. 

Coming undone.

Here is when my seam ripper having gone AWOL annoyed me to bits. After a day using a pair of small embroidery scissors I went mad and spent £2 buying another. 
Commonly known, that is the only way to summon back thing lost, and need I say it worked? That means I now have two seam rippers and they get a long pretty good, if I may say.

After spending an unreasonable amount of hours online researching pleats, I finally have, what I sincerely hope, a backside looking and falling to my likeness.

As I'm sewing this dress for no particular reason other than my own pleasure, I do not intend to make it authentically correct. I might never even wear it so making it with panniers and other period paraphernalia would make certain that I never would. Therefor I will try constructing it so it can be worn without having to use a corset etc. 
I have put some boning into the vest and hopefully that will be enough but in case it isn't, I already have period stays to wear that I made years ago :o)

A few boning canals - steel boning.

I also made a stomacher to cover the front in between the fronts of the dress (that doesn't sound like it makes sense, but it does - I know it does).
So far I’m undecided if to use it or not. We’ll see what time has to say about that.

My next problem was/is how to make the front look good. I try it on, pin and unpin. Make a few stitches here and there, alter a bit, pin and redo.
In order not to go completely mad I started making the trims for lining the front of the creation. Inch wide strips of fabric torn, sewn together and hemmed left me with a 10.5 meter strip to play with.

Btw, I’m fully aware of mixing inches/cm’s/meters and yards but that’s just part of my charm :-P

Zigzagging across said 10.5 meter strip seemed like a good idea and it was, until I started gathering it together. It just didn't work out and had to be undone again. 

FYI I can disclose that I alternated between seam rippers as I didn't want either of them to feel wrongfully treated. There is always work enough to keep them both happy :)

Hemming trim.

Machine zigzagging the same.

So, two days work later, maybe three - time isn't really my strongest side - and the trim is now zigzagged by hand with strong enough thread that will never break no matter the pull. My fingers are however a different matter. If pulled they might fall right off!

In my next post I intend to share some pictures wearing this outfit. Quite a bit of work still remains before getting there though. I have to make a matching petticoat, fix the front, attach the trim, and probably add some more boning to the vest. In other words - I need to finish this whole shebang. 
Also, I need to figure out what sort of hairdo would be suitable to wear with it! So, see you all in August! ;-)


Alas, the bread maker has done its job and this grumbling tummy is going to be fed. We both did well today, but whoever put the salt in the fridge is a mystery yet to be solved!