necklines and decisions and progress, oh my
The last few days have seen some progress, mostly in the decision realm and ACTUALLY COMMITTING to certain design choices on the bliaut.
After much hemming and hawing and thinking about layers and fabric and what not I decided to just cut, cutting is commitment
I decided to cut the torso a little longer to allow for some rouching across the abdomen and possibly some adjustments around the chest. I also cut the back to allow for a sweep train, these dresses just look better if they puddle at your feet or trail behind you.
So I took scissors to fabric and cut a looooooong rectangle.
On the advice of a laurel in Drachewald who specialized in 12 century costuming I cut the rectangle as my chest measurement plus 4" (this becomes the integrated under arm gore) plus 2" (for seams) /2
The length was my dress length plus 1 foot for gathers in the front and an extra foot in the back for a train.
Normally I do a shoulder seam and taper it slightly and cut a curved neck seam.
This time I went for the so called "slit neck"
So what am I talking about here - a slit neck is… a slit, longer in the front than the back and it has some distinctive wrinkling across the shoulders you can see in these two statues
Normally when I do a revers facing I don't cut it until after the facing is applied, but I wanted to see if I would like this style and I wasn't sure how long to cut it - from reading recommendations from two different people they both said the front should slit down to the centre of the bra band, so it splits evenly and causes no odd bumps when laced.
The drawback is that if your facing goes too low you get some odd… distortion of the facing under the chest. You can see what I mean in this image.
So I marked it, cut and tried it on, then had to cut lower. I may not have it cut low enough, but, committed now :)
You can see even with no fitting I am already getting similar wrinkle on the shoulder and around the bust.
With big dresses the last thing you want to do is muck about with the neck after you've attached all the heavy skirts and since this fabric is likely to stretch when handled I want that neck finished before I start trying to fit the torso
so
I had to get to work on that facing!
And I want to embellish that facing - so there was the next decision.
What embroidery to do? How to get it onto the fabric (I really cannot draw anything!) what colours.. et
First I plotted out some deigns using some quilt stencils - but meh
Then I looked for stencils online and in my local quilt stores. Online I found some nice patterns but the local stores don't have them. On to the craft store.. nope
And the fabric store where I found what I call the magic pencil.
This magical thing allows you to draw (or trace) a design on to paper which you can then iron on and it washes out.
Hurray!
Armed with some designs from this document http://www.axemoor.net/pdf/1_Embroidery_for_Clothing.pdf
I sized the designs I liked, printed then and traced one into a large iron on template. I got very lucky that the sizing worked as well as it did as I barely needed to fuss with the repeats to get it to fit correctly.
After a lot of waffling I picked a colour and set to!
I have a lot of stitching to do….
After much hemming and hawing and thinking about layers and fabric and what not I decided to just cut, cutting is commitment
I decided to cut the torso a little longer to allow for some rouching across the abdomen and possibly some adjustments around the chest. I also cut the back to allow for a sweep train, these dresses just look better if they puddle at your feet or trail behind you.
So I took scissors to fabric and cut a looooooong rectangle.
On the advice of a laurel in Drachewald who specialized in 12 century costuming I cut the rectangle as my chest measurement plus 4" (this becomes the integrated under arm gore) plus 2" (for seams) /2
The length was my dress length plus 1 foot for gathers in the front and an extra foot in the back for a train.
Normally I do a shoulder seam and taper it slightly and cut a curved neck seam.
This time I went for the so called "slit neck"
So what am I talking about here - a slit neck is… a slit, longer in the front than the back and it has some distinctive wrinkling across the shoulders you can see in these two statues
Normally when I do a revers facing I don't cut it until after the facing is applied, but I wanted to see if I would like this style and I wasn't sure how long to cut it - from reading recommendations from two different people they both said the front should slit down to the centre of the bra band, so it splits evenly and causes no odd bumps when laced.
The drawback is that if your facing goes too low you get some odd… distortion of the facing under the chest. You can see what I mean in this image.
So I marked it, cut and tried it on, then had to cut lower. I may not have it cut low enough, but, committed now :)
You can see even with no fitting I am already getting similar wrinkle on the shoulder and around the bust.
With big dresses the last thing you want to do is muck about with the neck after you've attached all the heavy skirts and since this fabric is likely to stretch when handled I want that neck finished before I start trying to fit the torso
so
I had to get to work on that facing!
And I want to embellish that facing - so there was the next decision.
What embroidery to do? How to get it onto the fabric (I really cannot draw anything!) what colours.. et
First I plotted out some deigns using some quilt stencils - but meh
Then I looked for stencils online and in my local quilt stores. Online I found some nice patterns but the local stores don't have them. On to the craft store.. nope
And the fabric store where I found what I call the magic pencil.
This magical thing allows you to draw (or trace) a design on to paper which you can then iron on and it washes out.
Hurray!
Armed with some designs from this document http://www.axemoor.net/pdf/1_Embroidery_for_Clothing.pdf
I sized the designs I liked, printed then and traced one into a large iron on template. I got very lucky that the sizing worked as well as it did as I barely needed to fuss with the repeats to get it to fit correctly.
After a lot of waffling I picked a colour and set to!
I have a lot of stitching to do….