Please help me decide, friends! Should my 1882 print polonaise have a standing collar or a falling one (like a shirt ( Read more... )

I spent all day yesterday sewing. All that I really got done was the sleeves. And it wasn't that they were difficult or anything. Sewing, for me, is just something that is really slow. I had to iron all the seams, overcast several seams (shoulders, sleeves, and armscyes), sew the sleeves together, and set them. By the time I got those things done, ( Read more... )

I have all the big pieces together now. It just needs ironing before putting together the sleeves and adding them. Then it will be all the smaller, fiddly bits, like collar, cuffs, buttons, buttonholes, hems, and ties for bustling ( Read more... )

My day was much better today, except for one unfortunate incident. I was powering through on my Little House dress and got it almost all cut out and started assembling things. I was sewing the darts on the polonaise, which is a cotton print flatlined with voile, but one of the darts was sewn wonky, so I was picking out the stitches using the seam ( Read more... )

Well looks like all the pattern really needed was to be lengthened 2 inches, 1.5 inches right above the darts and 0.5 inches across the middle of the chest. This is the Basque Bodice for Medium-Sized Ladies in Frances Grimble's Fashions of the Gilded Age Vol. 1 (pg. 173) using the 43 cm ruler. If you have a larger bust, you might not need to ( Read more... )

I made up a mock-up of the polonaise and it was a dud. I'm naturally short-waisted and my corset is even slightly more so, but this mock-up was a good 2 inches too short of that! Ridiculous! So I need to add length. The back looked alright otherwise and the front looked promising, so I'm hoping mock-up #2 will be a success.

I don't it's cold here. I mean I have a cold. And it makes me feel blah. I think I just crashed after all the school and conference stuff. It's put a damper on the sewing. My skirt is still sitting around with its hem just pinned up. I ironed and trimmed it at some point, though. In even better progress, I drafted up a bodice pattern! I will ( Read more... )

So I took a bunch of pictures of it all as it stands so far. Mostly my 1880s undergarments, but also an unhemmed skirt. The petticoat I'm wearing under my ruffled bustle pad is my Edwardian one. It's narrow (like Natural Form) but gives a little more volume than just one petticoat. I really like the ruffled bustle pad. Add a bit of extra junk in ( Read more... )

I sewed a hook onto my petticoat a while ago. Just finished sewing the eyelet. So that is now officially done!

The skirt is coming along too. It's all together and I just did the button and buttonhole. I'm taking a page out of jenthompson's book an putting elastic at the back to hold the front of the skirt back. When I tried everything on the other day it ( Read more... )

My conference paper isn't progressing well at the moment and neither is my sewing. I managed to put in pockets and sew all the seams, but the machine was just being a huge hassle. It was doing the thing where the threads get stuck somewhere in the bobbin or something and then there's threads all caught in there. I had to re-thread the machine ( Read more... )