slowly, slowly

I took the bodice with me to a conference in Sydney last week and found some time to do a small amount of couching. Life has gotten in the way a little this week with starting a new job and recovering from the conference trip. Need to get back into the swing of things, i have so many projects planned for when this one is finished.

missed Crown deadline...still working

Ok, so I missed the November Crown deadline. I have spent somewhere around 500 hous so far(and a great friend has been doing around 50 hours of couching) and probably close to 300 to go....but it will be worth it to finish it properly. It is just taking so long now because the more applique that gets sewn down, the stiffer the skirt and the harder (and longer) it is taking to sew.

have used 2.5km of black cotton on applique....a bit more to go yet. More pics soon.

progress update

I have till the end of september to finish all of the applique on the skirt.....time to speed things up a bit. The dress bodice and sleeves will not take nearly so long to do because of their size - not as much to do and so much easier to handle. The skirt is getting heavy now and needs manhandling to go around the corners and reverse bits on the pattern. But I have finished all of the black on the back of the skirt and am nearly a quarter along skirt side one. I have also been madly couching on the emblishement - and I think it is really starting to take on the character of the dress.

Thanks to everyone for their positive comments, here are dome more pictures for you.

So cant wait to wear this to the November Crown Victory Ball.

now for some hand sewing

I am well and truely underway on the back of the skirt, probably nearly one quarter done. When I get tired of machine sewing, I can now work on the embelishmen on the front of the skirt. I am using DMC Antique Effects cotton for the couching because it was the closest I could get to the 'gold' upholstery velveteen.

I think it is starting to take on some character now.

The back of the skirt has decided it likes to fray at the edges of the black velveteen. So insead of working from top to bottom in an orderly fashion, I am jumping across to which ever piece needs sewing down quickly and re-ironing repeatedly. Delustered satin and velveteen are not a good combination for easy applique.

Front applique finished

I finally finished appliquing the detail onto the skirt front. Yay. Now on to the back of the skirt and doing the hand embroidery to embelish it (and make it look extra lush).

I estimate that I have spent around 215 hours from enlarging and simplifying the pattern to now. Still a few hours to go but I am looking forward to wearing it at November Crown.

And thanks for the posts... it just tok me a while to work out how to publish them, sigh.

I will post some close ups of the applique shortly.

still working....

No new pictures, but lots of time spent on the applique. I have been using a fine blanket stitch to secure the appliques to the satin. The satin is so slippery that the vislofex keeps lifting off, so it is a process of stitch a little, iron a little more. I have nearly finished the applique on the front of the skirt though.

I must start thinking about the buttons. I will need to carve one and then make a mould so I can cast 100 of them ....

Well this is taking a while, but today I finally got the front of the skirt ironed down. It took ages to carefully remove all of the paper backing, making sure I didn't fray the velveteen or rip off the sticky stuff. Next, everything had to be lined up with the template and pinned down. I finally worked up the courage to take to it with an iron, using an offcut of velveteen to try and stop the pile getting crushed.

I couldn't help pin in the pleats and hang it on the model...what do you think?

Nearly finished cutting out the velveteen for the skirt with only the side front sections to go (and they are shorter). Hoping to start ironing the pieces onto the satin this week.

Not much to update really, just cutting out black velveteen sections. The centre back is now cut out and I have started on one side back piece, then its onto the side front. Everywhere I turn there seems to be small offcuts of black fabric missed by the broom :o).

Skirt front is all cut out and ready to apply to the satin background. I couldnt resist having a look at how it was going to look so I have laid out all the pieces for the centre front skirt onto the satin.

I am reasonably impressed at how it is progressing and a little alarmed at the amount of time it is taking. This is definately not going to be one of my usual 'I need a new dress for the event at the end of the week' dresses.

Now it feels like I am starting to make some progress. The pattern has been applied to all of the velveteen for the skirt and I have started to cut it out. I think it is going to look pretty good. I found a great pair of scissors that have a spring in the handle so it shouldn't be too hard on the hands. Cant wait to have the front of the skirt stuck down and start doing some sewing.

Ok this is going to take a while. I have tracked down the double sided interfacing I wanted to transfer the pattern to the black and gold velveteen (its heavier than vislofex but the shop assistant didn't know what the brand name was). There are five 'pattern widths' required for the skirt. Each one takes up to 3.5 hours to transfer the pattern to the interfacing. So far I am a little over half way through the skirt..... then there are the sleeves and bodice to go. Then its on to cutting out the design and applying it to the ivory satin.

I have also made up a mock up of the dress to check the pattern. I was oringinally going to follow the dress pattern from the Eleanora of Toledo buriel gown as illustrated in Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion" however the gores in ths skirt play havoc with the fabric pattern so I have opted for an ungored skirt which will be either cartridge pleated or box pleated onto the bodice (depending on the weight of the finished skirt).