This dress was made for Pam, a lovely lady back east. She sent me the fabric she wanted her gown to be made from– and I think it turned out so terrific! It was an embroidered poly taffeta, and it was very pleasant to work with. The best part was she sent 13 yards, which was juuuuuust enough! Any less and this gown would have looked very different. I used up nearly every inch of fabric available!
I have completed the underskirt for the robe a la Francaise I’m building over that pink lacy monster pannier I made a few weeks ago. The photos really don’t convey how enormous this thing is! It is so gloriously ginormously gigantic, my client will feel like she should be roaming the rooms of Versailles. Well, that is, if she is able to exit her dressing room. The door is likely too small to allow this awesomeness to pass.
I love how it turned out, looks like a pretty princess cupcake!
I have started my next project, a big ol’ grand pannier for a very cool lady who lives on the east coast. Over this pannier will be the next gown I make, which I will start as soon as I’m through here.
She told me she just wanted a plain one, as no one was going to see it, but I started twitching at the mere thought. *plain*does*not*compute*
I am really surprised at how long it took me to make this gown! In my head everything is so simple, yet the execution took 50 times longer than I ever expected. Real life constantly interrupts me, and I need to find a way to deal with that effectively. .. and I can’t really whine about it, as this is a problem every seamstress in the world shares! If anyone has any tips– clue me in! I am already working on my next project, so this post will be rather prose sparse– but, as I took photos along the way, I might as well show them!
I have a lovely client named Alisa, from The Ladies of History, and for her next cosplay she would like to be Catherine the Great. She sent me three and a half yards of blue velour upholstery fabric and a vintage fur stole to make the cloak with… Only 3.5 yards? With a nap? For a cloak? That has to go over an 18th century gown? I just about fainted. It couldn’t be done! Cloaks need loads of yardage to look nice, a skimpy cloak just looks stupid, especially if you’re going to portray a Queen! I had no idea how I was going to make this work.
I am so happy to be done with this gown! I think it turned out so pretty, I’m sure my friend Lucia will love it!
I made these sleeves in a totally jackass sort of way– sorry. They have no basis in historical reality at all, I made them so they would be super easy to wear and alter, meaning they needed to be one piece and have an inner seam that completly controls the size of the sleeve. I have thought of a better way to make them easier to deal with, but naturally I didn’t think of it until everything was all done. Whoops. Always learning! I wonder when everything will stop being a prototype??
The bodice fronts came together pretty smoothly, which is totally not normal!
In the continuation of the Violet gown, I painstakingly cut out all the remaining pieces needed, sliced up and prepped the furbelow strips, and then was suddenly struck to make the stomacher first. I usually leave the stomacher until last, but couldn’t this time– with such a meager amount of fabric left, I had to make sure I had what I needed for the stomacher, and then I could fudge the skirt furbelows with scrap-pieced strips. Couldn’t do that with the stomacher! It’s such a focal point I wanted it to be lovely– and I wanted it to be echelle.