Correcting Mistakes and Progress Update

After the depressing discovery of my oversized stays, I fixed them, mostly by taking some tucks/darts to reduce the overall length around me, and shortened the straps by two inches, so that they will actually hold the stays in their proper position, although they still fall off my shoulders.  I have narrow, sloping shoulders (Oh, how I miss shoulder pads!!), and most things I put on them fall down... my purse, tote bags, left bra strap (always!!  Very frustrating).

So... after taking in the stays, I tried them on, and Voila!!  It works!  I have the correct fitting, and silhouette.  I even have space between the bones in back where the lacing is!  Woohoo!!

(no, I'm not showing you pictures of the stays on me... my chemise is rather see-through, so I'm keeping this G-rated!)

Undergarments, check.  Time to make a mock-up of the dress bodice and check for fit.  This actually took very little time (a couple of hours), compared to all the other things I've made thus far.  I tried the mock-up on, and it fits almost perfectly.  However, I had to make an adjustment in my chemise--it was too high up for the bodice to completely cover up.  I was kind of surprised by that.  But, upon reflection, I remembered that the front part of the bodice that I made goes underneath the bib front, which comes up higher on the neckline than the bodice front.  Sooo... no wardrobe errors, here!  To compensate for the slight gapping there, I shortened the shoulder pieces by 1/4", and shortened the front panels by 1/3".  When I tied the front together, the front panels were overlapping, and thus, not short enough to close up that gap.

Hm.  Thought I had a picture of it.  Oh, well...

Part of the problem is that I bought those patterns just after Thanksgiving, and I've lost enough weight since then that my rings are looser, and I've gone down a size in my clothing, even my bra!  I did a little shopping after school last Thursday, and was surprised that my usual size was too big.  Feels kinda cool, actually.  :)  In my head, I'm much smaller, even though it doesn't show much in the mirror.  So... mini happy dance!

Making a mock-up wasn't a waste of time, and those were very easy fixes.  I was also worried about the sleeves--the back of the bodice is hexagonal (loosely), so the tops of the sleeves extend into the back, and having never made something like this, I had no idea how it would fit.  So... I did sleeves in the mock-up as well.  It's a good thing I did!  To make the sleeves set in properly, you need to gather in about 80% of the sleeve, and then adjust it to fit the curves of the armscye (sewing term for armhole).  I was a little confused as to how to spread the gathers out, so I ended up with gathers everywhere, instead of just in the shoulder area.  So my first sleeve is wonky and puffy in the wrong places, and kinda hangs funny.  The second sleeve, then, was better, as I knew where the shoulder was, and concentrated the gathers just in the shoulder area, using the rest of the gathers to slightly pull in (called "ease") the sleeve to fit the armscye where it is supposed to be flat.  This sleeve hangs properly, and doesn't puff out in back, and is more comfortable.

Poorly fitted sleeve

Properly fitted sleeve

The second thing I found on the sleeve is that it was about 4 inches too long for my arms.  I was doing a half-sleeve, ending around my elbows, but this length was more like 2/3 length.  Technically, I'm a petite size on top (in terms of length--I have a short torso, and little T-Rex arms), so the sizing of most "normal" lengths is usually too long on me.  I don't mind it in shirts, as I prefer them long (because I hate my belly), but it is usually a problem for more fitted garments, where the bust darts are in the wrong place, and sleeves are almost always too long for me.  Thus, I shortened the sleeve length.

Surprisingly, cutting out the dress took a while.  The skirt pattern is ginormous, and wouldn't fit on my kitchen table, so I was having to move it around and pin it to keep it from shifting the wrong way, and then discovered that my fabric width was two inches too short!!!  At first, I was upset, but then my little problem-solving brain kicked in gear, and I realized I'll simply have to use slightly shallower pleats to compensate for the shorter width.  No biggie.  :)

Ready to sew!!!

I was concerned with what I'd line the bodice with, as my muslin is white, and the fabric for the dress is cream-colored.  But I cut my pieces out so well that I had plenty of leftover material, and was able to do a self-fabric lining.  To make sure I didn't confuse the pieces (lining vs. print), I cut them upside-down and used the wrong side (unprinted) as the "right" side for the lining.  It's a little confusing, in terms of how I'm describing it, but it worked out fine.  Not that anybody will be seeing it, of course!

So yesterday, before taking Ella to the doctor, I had some time to sew, and I managed to complete the entire bodice as well as the bib front and ties...it helps that I'd made the mock-up the day before, so I knew all the steps and didn't need to refer to the instructions constantly.  Now all I need to do is complete the skirt, figure out how much I will need to shorten the length (again, 5' 4" doesn't really meet "average" height), hem it, and do hand-stitching on a few parts.

Underlining the neckline.  You stitch the lining of the bodice to the raw edges of the neckline a scant 1/8" from the actual seam.  This makes the lining roll under the edge of the seam, so that none of it peeks out.  It makes a nice, clean edge.

Finished underlining. You can see how I made the lining of the bodice the wrong side of the dress fabric. 

These are the ties for the dress.  They wrap around the front to tie in the back, which makes this dress easy to put on by yourself.  The bottom tie has been pressed, but the top one has just been turned right side out, thus showing why you have to press/iron the things down.  Not pretty!!

The real question for me is...will I have time to do the spencer (jacket) and the hat?  Hat, no big deal.  Jacket?  Possible big deal.  We'll see how the weekend turns out!  Oh--I remembered this morning that I still haven't made up a slip.  But that's super-easy.

Finished bodice front (the upside-down part won't be seen) on my sewing table.

Finished bodice on my dress form, which I suspect of being too big.  Sleeves are shorter than the mock-up, and there is a bigger gap between the front panels.  When the dress is all sewed, I will attach ties to the top, middle, and bottom of these front edges.  That brings the bodice together, and fits it to the torso.  You can see a vertical line/seam on the right side of bodice (as you're facing it), which is what will show.  The bib front will cover the ties and front panels.  

Here are two illustrations that show you how the bib front dress works--these use buttons to close up the front panels, and my pattern calls for ties.  Some front panels actually overlap, and at the time, were closed using straight pins!  I will not be using straight pins... I'm afraid of having them poke me!  I plan on using vintage mother-of-pearl buttons to hold up the bib instead of pins.

  

My dress is not designed for wraparound ties...mine are supposed to tie in a bow in the back.  I'd prefer wraparound, actually... my short arms don't reach comfortably behind my fat back, and the way I tie bows makes them go sideways or upside-down, and thus, look funky.  I may be able to make them wrap around...we'll see how it works out.

Trying things on...

...and finding out they don't fit.  AFTER you've finished them! 

Sigh.

Because my husband sounded less than thrilled to lace up my stays, I looked up online how to lace stays by yourself.  So I gave it a try last night.  It was surprisingly easy, and worked fine. 

But... it's too big.  I think maybe my dress form might be a little off in its measurements, because it fits much differently on me!  I'm supposed to have at least an inch of gap between the boning at the center back, and mine were overlapping!!  And they just weren't fitting right. 

I went to bed last night, trying to figure out how I can fix this without having to redo the whole dang thing.  I will need to take it in both in the back and at the shoulder.  Not cool, but necessary.  I just don't have the time to redo it.  Later, I'll make a new one... as I've been slowly losing weight, it will definitely be a necessity later.  :) 

On the one hand, I'm frustrated, but on the other... I'm kind of glad.  I guess I'm smaller than I thought I was, and I'm having a hard time feeling bad about that part!  Another positive:  this means the size of my dress pattern will be easier to fit (I was anticipating having to do many alterations).  But it also makes me question how accurate my dress form really is...  hmm...

Back to the sewing table!

Shoes and Mitts

My last post was very long.  This one is short... but part of the update from the last post.

I finished my crocheted lace mitts:

I may add wrist ties (they were included in the pattern), as the wrinkles mid-wrist kinda bother me.  

I also bought shoes!  Here's a picture:

The shoes for the outfit are on the right, as are the stockings (in a package).  The adorable gray flats' kitten faces are in sparkly crystals.  I'm not a big cat fan, but these flats were too cute to pass up!  (and they were on sale) I haven't worn them yet... soon!!

Original shoes were very similar... pointy toes, flats, etc.  I would have preferred boots, but finding boots today that look like ones from the early 1800s are difficult, and expensive.  Sigh...

 

Gorgeous!  I should decorate my new shoes, but I want to wear them afterwards with pants, so I think I'll leave them plain for now.  

These were called "half-boots", kind of what we call a bootie these days.  

Time for an Update!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while...  busy days!

I spent my 3-day weekend mostly working on my project.  I have completed many things:

• Chemise
• Stays
• Stockings
• Shoes
• cap
• kerchief
• mitts

I am in progress on the reticule (purse).  Some of you may remember seeing me work on it in class on Friday.  

What is left to complete:

• slip
• dress
• spencer (jacket)
• Hat

The slip is easy.  The dress I may need to size up a bit, depending on my measurements in full underwear.  

Speaking of full underwear... the stays have been quite a challenge.  The first time I held the adjusted lining up to my dress form, I was floored--the area for "the girls" was HUGE!  Flopping over!  So I adjusted them to fit the dress form, and I was pleased with the result.  But then I began to think... the purpose of the stays was to create the correct form, which was to lift the "girls" up, sort of like an 1800s Wonderbra.  Making my stays fit my dress form would have it retain a modern silhouette, unlike the "shelf" silhouette for the 1800s.  So... I had to unpick all of my binding, cut the lining and front slits and insert the gussets I had done originally.  This time, I also included a ribbon in the top bias binding in front, so that it can be adjusted to fit (ribbon ends stitched in at the far ends, with a buttonhole in center front, so that the two ribbons have ends hanging out to be tied)

A little infographic for you:

The stays over my practice chemise.

Flossing over the end of the hip gussets

From the back.  It does a good job of creating a nice silhouette, but the front was all wrong!

So... that was time-consuming.  Those extra 8 gussets also needed to be flossed, so... more handwork!  Flossing was done on stays at the points of gussets where the seam allowance tapered off.  By stitching over the points of the gusset, you secure the fabric so it won't shred or come apart there.  The stays were pretty time-consuming altogether.  Lots of details, lots of hand-stitching (all the seam binding at bottom and top were stitched on by machine, but had to be hand-stitched down on the inside).  I got the reeds to lie flatter (they were still curvy from being coiled) by steaming them with my iron.  I had to set all 28 grommets in one-by-one (noisy!  I knew I didn't have time to make them by hand (to be period correct... metal grommets didn't come out until after 1825.  But I felt that metal would be sturdier), so I banged away with my ball-peen hammer and setting tools for an hour or so.

Showing you the hand-stiched binding around the top of the stays.

The Chemise took longer than I expected, because all the seams had to be flat-felled.  I'll see if I can find a quick link to explain it.  You have flat-felled seams on the long outside seam of your jeans, actually.  It's a way to finish the edges of fabric by turning them under and stitching them down.  I did my chemise on the machine... there's no way I could've done that by hand!!  I did do it by hand on my cap, though.  It was a little challenging, but it was the only proper way to finish the circular seam in the back.  

Flat-felled seams.

Speaking of my cap... I made a mock-up to test for fit, etc.  I made some adjustments to it, and then cut it out.  This fabric is so light that it is practically sheer!  I embroidered a circular back panel, using a pattern I found online (resource had three galleries of patterns ranging from the 1810s to the 1830s).  However, when I cut it out, I used the wrong pattern--the shorter length!  I didn't realize it until I actually put it on, and was curious why there weren't very many gathers.  But rather than throw it out, I decided that I liked it anyway, because it wasn't super-ruffly.  It feels like I have nothing on my head, it's so light.  I used about a yard of my finest lace--French Maline lace, which is a delicate cotton.  I bought it many years ago from my favorite lace seller, a Russian family, at Sew Expo.  

French Maline lace... super delicate and beautiful!

Fitting the lace to the edge of the cap.  To do this, you pull a thread at the heading of the lace (the plain edge) and gather it using that thread (it's put there for that purpose).  I didn't want my hat to be too foofy, so I let the gathered fabric make the ruffle, not the lace.

Ta-Daa!  stitched down.

Mock-up in plain cotton muslin

Embroidery in progress

Finished embroidery panel and mock-up cap back, showing you where the panel should go.

I have to say that I've been enjoying using fine fabrics on this project...fine Swiss batiste for the cap (soft as butter), the lovely cotton sateen for the corset (felt like silk satin ribbon), and the fine handkerchief batiste for the Chemise.  When I hand-rolled the long bias edge of my fichu, it was so nice to have fabric so fine that you could get a nice fold on the edge just by using the heat of your fingers.  Luxury!!  I made the fichu of the same material as the cap, as it would have been in the time period.  I put a nice cotton lace on the flat sides of the fichu for decoration, and hand-rolled a hem on the bias seam.  

hand-rolling...I don't know why her edges are all frayed.  

After a few stitches, you pull on your thread, and magically, the top rolls to the bottom.  

Finally, I have half the panels of my bag done.  I need to do two more, but I'd run out of sequins.  So I did a rush order at Cartwright's Sequins, which arrived Saturday.  That's all the hand work I have left to do.  I finished my second mitt Friday evening.  

The original

Main panel of the original

Whew!  But with all the basics done, I am ready to do the actual dress.  I'll do a mock-up of the bodice this week, so that I can see what I need to do to make it fit properly.  

Getting Dressed in 1816

I was working during my lunch today, and decided to prepare for 6th by going to YouTube to get to the video I want to show today.

My home page for YouTube had this video on my "Things you might be interested in" feed:  "Getting Dressed in 1816".  It's centered around Mary Shelley and the night she was inspired to write Frankenstein, but after the first few seconds, it inexplicably goes to the part about getting dressed.  It only lasts about halfway through the video, but it kind of encapsulates my simplest goal--to have a complete outfit.

Time is quickly passing, so I'm starting to worry about my Spencer, hat and reticule.  We'll see how things go!!

But I wanted to share the video...

Making Progress...kinda

Since my last post, I've made progress on my various sub-projects. These are all parts of the main goal, but they do take time.

On New Year's Day, my husband, Rob, and I made a duct-tape body double of my torso to put over my new dress form. We did this for two reasons: the dress form was a bit smaller than me, and my body has rounded parts that are not necessarily standard on dress forms.

This was fun to do, partly because I like working on projects with Rob (he frequently thinks of things I don't, and he has often helped me with my creative ideas), and partly because I've wanted to do this for years. It took longer than the tutorials I watched, probably because I'm larger than the people in the tutes, and we'd never done this before, so we needed to problem solve as we progressed. But Rob and I are both kind of perfectionists, so we both wanted to do it right.

I'm not a fan of silver duct tape...I find it kind of hard on my eyes, as it is reflective. So after grabbing a ginormous roll of silver, I opted to get a roll of extra strong white tape. We decided to use this for the second layer.  The first layer was rather soft, not what I was expecting. But that also explained why so many of the people I watched had really squishy results. The best video (linked here) recommended three layers, but we decided two was plenty. We were almost out of tape after the second layer, and as I was fairly immobile, wrapped in layers of webbing and polymer, I was not really able to travel. It was a bit like armor, and kind of cool in that respect. But I couldn't bend, slouch, or sit, and 2 1/2 hours of standing in uncomfortable shoes had taken its toll, and Rob had developed two blisters from all the tape cutting. We managed to gum up three pairs of scissors, too! I de-gummed them today with acetone.

When Rob cut the form up the center back, it was such a relief! I had to go to the bathroom, my back and feet hurt, and it was almost time for me to start making dinner. We hung the taped shell of my body on the dress form, just to see how it looked. It was a humbling experience. I hate my belly enough as it is, but seeing what I look like in 3D, well... let's just say I have inspiration for more weight loss. I'm currently at the lowest weight I've been in about 20 years, but there's certainly more to lose!

 

I've been busy with returning to work last week, but I've been working on other parts of the project. I'm tired when I get home, so I don't often have the motivation to do projects that involve several hours on weeknights. So, I crocheted one of the mitts I posted last week, and as you saw on Friday, I worked on the bracelet in class. I did more on it Friday evening...it's now about 2/3 finished.

In order to work on this project in my very small sewing space, I had to clear a lot of accumulated clutter. That actually was really good for me, and I'm donating some of what I unearthed to Ms. Sinclair's supplies. ☺️ And now I actually have room to work in there. That was Saturday.

Today, I padded and stuffed my dress form, and taped up the back to make it permanent. It's very cool to be able to try things on the form. I checked the measurements, and it's pretty much exact. When I was done with that, I got to break out my patterns, cut out the parts I needed, and figure out the measurements for the corset. This was surprisingly challenging! You have to use very specific measurements to determine size, and then what size to cut the gusset panels. It was more complicated than I expected it to be!

 


So... now I have a fully functional dress form, accurate pattern pieces ready to put to the test, and a clean sewing space. Woohoo! (ignore the crap on the floor under my computer desk...empty bag of stuffing, recycling, papers to file... and the top of my desk has accumulated clutter...I was kinda just tossing stuff on there while cleaning the rest of the area!)

Here is my progress on the bracelet:

What most of you saw me doing in class...

Just a bit more to go, and this part will be complete!

This week, I will work on my other mitt (I brought the first one to class on Friday), cut out the chemise and corset test fabric, sew them up, and hopefully finish the bracelet.

I met a friend for lunch on Saturday, and afterwards we went to Shipwreck beads. I picked up some coral beads in two sizes. Coral was a popular material for jewelry, and people from  the late 1700s through the mid- 1800s believed coral had health benefits. So if I have time, I might knot myself a necklace (beads strung on silk cord with knots between each bead).