A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Since Alice has helpfully posted her photos, there are now enough of my own silly face to make a recap not entirely photo-less. Thanks Alice! :D

So! Wednesday night I decided to stay up late and throw together a hood, because suddenly cold was going to be a Thing. (Nobody wants the ones in my shop so I could have worn either of them, but didn't like how they looked with my coat and dresses.) Bulk of it took about an hour (because yay machine sewing!), but measuring and cutting all the strips of rabbit took another hour! So I of course had some sewing to do in Gettysburg, but since I think Katherine was the only one, I didn't feel too bad!

Thursday I headed out to sewloud's place around noon, and we managed to shove her, me, koshka_the_cat, and alllllll of our stuff into one car. Wheeeee! Who needs to see out the back of their car, right? Katherine got these shots of it...

( Onward! Not for the faint of heart! )
And I would like to note that I started writing this post approximately 12 hours ago! Silly Thanksgiving dinner and eternal cleanup! *flops* But hey, now I can sew 1830s without (much) guilt! Still need to get pics of the marquee dress. May in fact wait til the Victorian Christmas tea at Smithville if we're doing that, though. Am bad blogger.

Gettysburg photobucket album here

Well...paletot week was sort of a failure - once I got the lace in the mail I kept wandering off from the paletot. I even made a capelet to wear over my ballgown! (From the yard-and-a-bit of my white and yellow taffeta stripe from Belvidere...if I can remember to take pics of it in daylight tomorrow I will.)

At least there's really only a day's worth of work left on the paletot to make it wearable. The front lapel-buttony-thingies that are annoyingly piped will take longer, but as the buttons won't really fasten, they aren't vital to paletot function, and I can put the lining in without regards to them either. And the forecast as it currently stands is too warm for a paletot anyway! (So I'll be really mad if if spend all my sewing time on a coat I won't even be able to wear without melting...)

I had a bunch of stuff to do this weekend, which didn't allow for great chunks of sewing time, but I got the ballgown skirt panels sewn together, and today made the flounce, which has a really low ruffle:skirt ratio and STILL took four solid hours to get to the point of lace-sewing. (Sewing all the lace on by hand, because machine sewing would be really visible, and what's the point of buying delicate expensive cotton English lace if you're going to put clunky machine stitches all over it?)

Any other type of fabric and I'd have just topstitched the hems on the flounce and called it a day, as both of them are getting lace-covered, but this satin wouldn't be happy with that. Because satin is gorgeous and EVIL. So the whole stupid thing is lined in a brown lightweight linen-cotton (ugly poop brown, which wouldn't be my first choice, but since I really can't buy anything else for this dress, even a couple yards of muslin, this was the best Stash option) to prevent it from doing that curly-hem thing satin so loves to do.

One more note: I think I'm going to be pulling a few all-nighters to be able to finish everything I want for Gettysburg, and I've had the brilliant (?) idea to do them this week, rather than the days right before. We'll see how this works out...

With the marquee dress done, I have determined this to be Paletot Week. Shouldn't take the whole week, actually, which is good.

Some weird things going on that I wish I could fix (this is what happens when you pick up a project you started two years ago), but not enough to take the entire thing apart to fix them, haha. Nothing truly horrible. I sewed the sleeves on yesterday, so it's mainly piping and facings and fiddly bits and figuring out pockets. All the things that you think shouldn't take as long as they do.

Entertainingly, the paletot feels like it weighs nothing, after dragging around the marquee dress!

Reasonably productive today on my day off, although only one thing I worked on was exciting enough to take a picture of...

First, I wired the brim of a bonnet and sewed binding around the edges of all the pieces. (By machine! With mismatched bobbin thread! No, you don't get a picture of that.) So they're all ready to be sewn together into something that hopefully resembles a bonnet, whenever I feel like sewing though buckram.

...so, never, then?

Then I made all the rest of the velveteen stripes for the paletot - and it was just total dumb luck that I made enough. No measuring or anything, but I ended up with about three inches leftover. Hooray dumb luck! And yes, that means I finished sewing the stripes onto the paletot, that's how I know there were three inches of stripe to spare.



And I tried it on Mabel over the hoop, and I don't love how it looks, to be completely honest! I should've probably taken a bit more fulness out of the skirt back when I was fitting the mockup. All the velveteen makes the skirt a bit stiff, and it stands out kind of weirdly. But I don't absolutely hate it, and there's no way to fix it without a completely ridiculous amount of work that I wouldn't want to do even if I had the time for it. So it is what it is!

And for some reason, after that I wanted a break from hand sewing and paletots, so I ripped panels for a chemise. I keep forgetting to put it on my list, but I really need one with the correct neckline for my ball gown. I sewed a sleeve gusset on the wrong way twice before I decided it was time to pack it up for the night...

I was off today (woo), so I made myself cut more strips of velvet and sew them on. The sleeves are finished, and I got two stripes on the skirt finished as well. It takes a lot less time to type that than it did to sew, believe me!

At least it's all downhill from here, since the longest stripe goes on the bottom, of course - which was about 130".

I suppose I haven't spent that many hours total on these strips yet. It just feels like forever! Measure, cut, iron iron iron... I did have the thought that I'm an idiot for not just buying velvet ribbon, and then I remember - 1/ I didn't want to spend money if I didn't have to, and 2/ the strips are cut on the bias, so, duh, that wouldn't've worked anyway.

For a refresher - this is the trim I'm doing! I've worked out all the measurements for the strips, and I'm working on them largest-to-smallest - that way I won't cut any strips I don't need! It's easy to make larger strips smaller, but not so much the other way.

And I'm currently in the process of sewing the widest strips on the sleeves. By hand, naturally. Well, if I did it by machine it would be obvious and icky!

I was supposed to be off work today, but then I wasn't - so there went my plan of trim-wrangling. I need a good chunk of time when I'm not tired to do that, since it involves maths and stuff. So, Sunday is the new trim-wrangling day.

Instead of paletot trim, I basted the layers of the sleeves together, and then since I wanted to keep hand-sewing, I switched back to the pompom spencer. Got the other sleeve sewn together, which is good because now that there's a date set for the Pumpkin Tea, it suddenly seems a lot closer.

Robin asked for a picture, but since it was made out of white muslin, it just looked like a giant white blob and/or choir robe. Very ugly. Also I've already taken it apart, so you'll just have to wait.

So, yes - I fitted the paletot mockup today - both before and after work (I actually got up early enough to do a bit of sewing before work. !!!). And that includes the sleeve, too. Be impressed. Not the collar, though; I haven't yet decided whether to make a collar or to just tack on my vintage fur collar. (Not the one with eyes.) I'm hesitant because the fur's a similar shade to the wool, and what's the point of a fur collar if it doesn't stand out? So I'll worry about collars later.

I still need to make a paper pattern from my mockup pieces - and decipher my scribbles! - but I happen to be off work tomorrow, so watch this space for pictures of cut-out paletot pieces, at least!

That leaves a whole 5% in which I could change my mind! Which I think I have. Whoops. And after you all left such nice comments about that trim design! But I've found something I like even better...I was trying to find an example of a plaid paletot for Robin (not a mantle or cape or giant blanket, but a fitted garment, which none of us can seem to find - so if any of you have seen one do share!) in the depths of the internet last night, and stumbled across this photograph.

Annnnd I think it needs to be mine. Even more than the star one. It's earlier than my other inspirations, but I think I'll just make the sleeves a little more manageable in size (and to update it a couple of years) and call it a day.

An upshot of the design change is that the only thing I'll now have to buy for the paletot is buttons. Maybe. (And hooks & eyes for the real fastenings.) Though now I want a veil for my bonnet... Anyway, fabric change as well - now it'll be my tan wool, with the trim strips out of velveteen, I think. Black or dark brown, I have both and I haven't decided which.

Now, if I can just stop looking up 1860s images...maybe I'll stop changing designs like a crazy person! (Though this simplifying of the paletot trim probably means I will have time for a day dress...heh heh heh)