A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I just remembered that I forgot  (or...no, nevermind, I've confused myself!) that I did take a picture of exactly how much fabric I had left after everything on the pet en l'air was finished. It's with the crap camera of yore, but eh:

That's less than I'm accustomed to having left over, let me tell you.

In between the thunderstorms and the hail and my being out until it was dark, I did manage to take pictures with my shiny new camera. (I like to take "finished" pictures of gowns and things on Mabel on the back deck if at all possible, as the light in this house is awful.)


First one includes the fichu, because I like it, and because then the stupid little flap I insisted to myself I wanted on there doesn't look so stupid. (I'm not completely enamored with this stomacher...if you couldn't tell...but the small brainz could not figure anything better to do.)
( Peektures! )

Edit: And I just remembered that I did take a picture of how much fabric I had left over after all was said and done.

Not much!

I sewed together about 75% of the stomacher for the pet en l'air tonight - the original in Costume in Detail and PoF1 has a mock stomacher - it fastens with hooks and eyes at CF, but I have had about enough of 18thc things that close at CF, and want something different. Plus I don't have large enough pieces of the cotton damask to make the tabs that way - in one piece- anyhow!

So, I sewed tabs on a stomacher instead, and then decided it looked stupid, as I can't cut and sew things like tabs straight, so there was a noticeable (to me) difference in their size. And I decided the tabs can go to hell.

Am going to dig something else, probably totally non-matching, out of the Stash to make a stomacher instead. I would have liked to have the same look as the pet en l'air in the books, but eh. I don't care all that much. Well, now I get to go through all my books and decide what I want the stomacher to look like...mwahaha.

I think my attention span on this particular project has just about run out at the moment. I wouldn't even have worked on it today, but I didn't want to leave bits of sleeve flounce laying out, not sewn together, because I know I'd lose them, and then I'd really be screwed.

( A slleve, a flounce, then a sleeve and a flounce together. ) I should work on the polonaise or the Tudor gown tomorrow, but...I wanna make a bustle! (I think I'm actually going to make this outfit...I must be feeling crazier than usual.)

Sewing Progress: Sewed together one sleeve for the pet en l'air, and sewed it in. Extremely exciting.

I actually spent more of the afternoon CADD-ing again...the 1870s of course. I was struck with the possibly genius idea that, instead of using the striped silk and having to buy more fabric for pretty much the whole gown (much as I would really love to use that silk), I could use the black and white striped fabric I already have. It's not silk, it's only cotton, sadly, but it is striped, and black and white is always awesome. I was going to save it for a Duchess-style 1780s outfit, but really, I already have a lot of fabric for 18thc things, and I think this would work very nicely for 1870s too. Plus that would mean I have to spend a whole lot less money - I was looking at wool, and nice wool is pretty expensive since it seems to be out of season for it at Fabric.com (which is where I got my green wool for my medieval dress, and I love that wool; and it was really cheap too, 100% wool and was something like $6/yd)...plus, why is 85% of solid color wool apparently either black, grey, or some icky shade of taupe? So boring.

So anyway, using the striped cotton will preclude any Great and Unsatisfying Wool Hunt of 2009, which is good. And then I will spend less money, which I think might have been the plan for sewing this year, but which costume lust has pretty much thrown out the window.

I'll still have to buy a busk and boning, though - money money money! Anybody have any recommendations who to get it from...or who not to order from?

Later posting tonight than usual, because I decided I was going to try the pet en l'air on tonight if it was the last thing I did, dammit.

Disclaimer: bathroom mirror photos, and don't be laughing at the faces I'm making in these pictures!

( Commence stupid face-making. )
I still have to make a stomacher and sleeves (I hate sleeves), which hopefully will have those lovely fan-shaped falling cuffs, if I have enough fabric...things will be pieced if they have to be! Actually things already are pieced; I had to do quite a bit of fiddling with the skirt panels to make the side back skirt bits anything like long enough.

No, as a matter of fact, I have not dropped off the face of the planet. (Yeah, I know I've gone longer than this without posting, but it just seems like a long time - probably because I haven't been on the internet at all for a few days.) Have done various unexciting things like unpack (why do I have so much stuff?), which took me forever, but which I eventually had to do because I kept stubbing my toe on the various suitcases in my room; hang out with my At-Home Friends and oh dear god, it has hit me that my dear friend is marrying into a rather hick-ish family...I got to meet them last night and wow , dye my hair again so that my mother could shake her head and various relatives could make snide comments when they came over for my sister's birthday party today, and of course sleep. A lot. Which is very nice. I like my sleep, thanksverymuch.

Oh, and I did sew. I would say that it's nothing picture-worthy, but that would be a lie, so I'll skip right to where I admit that I'm too lazy to take pictures, which you all know already. And not everything I sewed is that exciting that it needs to be photographed!

First, I dicked around with fixed up the Big-Ass (ha. ha.) 1780s rump because I didn't quite like how it looked, and I was feeling all inspired to continue working on the peach stripe polonaise. So I decided to pleat the skirt to the bodice. Bad decision; Pleating = 2, Me = 0. I pleated it all in twice, and it didn't work out either time (damn stripes!). Finally unpinned it all and chucked it on the I Am PIssed Off At You Heap (which has merged with the My Attention Has Wandered To More Interesting Things Pile, and this is a terrifying alliance that threatens to take over my room). In an effort to work on things that were not pleating that skirt to that bodice, I 1) finished the edges on my pocket hoops that have been undone for months (hah, MAHWTMIT Pile, your ranks have been depleted!), 2) made the peach petticoat to go with the polonaise, 3) fixed the waistband and the hem of the petticoat to go over the pocket hoops, and then started looking around for other things I could do besides the evil pleating of the evil skirt to the evil bodice.

So, you know, I decided to make a pet en l'air (which is just the super-special name for a sack back 18thc jacket). I is a leetle crazy. Anyway,  I'm basing it on the one on pages 19-20 of Costume In Detail, and it's also in Arnold's PoF 1, but I'm far too lazy to get up and walk three feet across the room to get the book to see what page it's on.

I've had the faric for it for literally years - I saw it in the remnant bin at Jo-ann's in 2006, and it wanted to come home with me and be the pet en l'air in CiD, so I let it  Since it's a drapery remnant and 54" wide, and it was about 2 2/3 yards, I figured was it was probably enough for said jacket. (I still figure I'm right...but I haven't gotten to the sleeves yet, heh.)

So, that's what I've been doing for the past two days (sadly not nonstop, as stupid things like annoying relative who hate my hair kept getting in the way of my sewing time, grr!) - sewing this jacket! For some reason, I was bitten by the Crazy Bug, and have been 1) handsewing all of it, and 2) decided to drape my fashion fabric on Mabel. But it's been going uncannily well; I'm actuallly starting to get suspicious that I've done something really stupid, like forget I need fabric for sleeves that are larger than 5" square, or something.

I'll let you know!