Ok, go the neckline and the arms piped and tacked down....
The pattern calls for a strip of selvege to be sewn to the arm seam. I can only assume this is a double-purpose of some support of the poofy upper sleeves and to cover the raw edges. My selveges are not the prettiest, so I used a piece of linen twill tape I had lying around. Seems to have done it's job.
With the tape tacked down over the seams, I added a 3" piece of the lining material to the edge of the sleeve. The pattern calls for the edge to be raw, but I just *can't*. ('m allergic to raw edges, I think?)
Now comes the fun part...marking out all the 1/4" gathers....first I did dots, then went back over to do the lines since it's curved, not straight each line had to be *ever so slightly* curved. Whoa. What a painola! I like the look of the gathers continuing down the upper arm, or I would not have bothered with this step.
I'm going for more of a look like this:
I did three rows of stitching, one 1/4" from the edge, one 1/2" from the edge, and another 1 1/4" from the edge. My pleats are not as tightly packed as the ones above, but I think the overall look (especially after stuffing the sleeves) will be pretty good.
At any rate...since there is piping in the way of where I would normally tack my pleats, I'm in a bit of pickle. The instructions were not too helpful on this point. So I totally fudged it.
There's a itty bitty piece from where the piping was tacked to the lining... I lined up the edge of the gathers with the inside edge of the piping casing. Looking back on it now, I maybe should have run the tacks through the strip of fabric between the piping cord and the body of the dress? hm....I guess I'll never know. Here's gauging the pleats...
And the entire sleeve tacked from the inside....
Because the pleats were set back about 1/4", there was a little flappy flap that poked up. I hemmed and hawed about what to do with it....
And I finally decided to run a stitch next to the piping cord, catching the tops of the pleats.
So everything is nice and snug now!
Wow....This bodice is mightily un-impressive for how long it took! Load and loads of hand sewing and fiddly little bits. Ah well. At least I can wear it and feel good about it! Only the skirt to go!
I also finally tacked down the inside of my bonnet. And about 30 minutes after I had finished, I found the most beautiful lavendar silk on sale for $6 that matches perfectly! (I bought the whole bolt. 'Cause I'm a fabric
BTW, had an awesome time shopping with sis, even though
Bags under the eyes, massively fuzzy hair, and the enormous zit I attribute to the stress I've been feeling at work lately....but here's the bonnet...I loves me teh bonnet!!!
I will be torturing you all with bonnet trimming possibilites in the next few weeks. Comments, suggestions welcome!!!!!
I hesitate to post the pictures below, because it makes me wish I had seen them before I had done so much work on the dress, but here are some things I love of the same(ish) period:
I LOVE the neckline on this one, otherwise almost exactly like the dress I made....I just love the solid yoke, tho! Dang!
If I had seen these sleeves just a week earlier, I woulda done these!
Or even these, although probably too complicated for my skillz and timeframe!
This one....it looks like it's almost the exact same original shape as mine, but the fullness is tucked and gathered to down around the bicep.
So anyway....I'm gaining a better understanding of the dresses of the period (I hope!) and should I ever do it again, I have some pretty Cool Ideas.
Too bad I've found all this stuff after the fact. I'm still on a continuing hunt for hattery ideas.
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