5-1-06
I'm dating this as May 1st but I have been working on this since February. I just needed someplace to start for the purposes of the diary. So, all the planning took place in January and February, everything has happened since then. =)

I recently saw a lot of portraits that have these kind of silly puffed and paned sleeves. It seems that most of the time, these sleeves are used with a doublet bodice or overgown. However, I have a doublet bodice and while fun, I also wanted to do a puffed partlet like the Isabel de Valois portrait. I plan on making that one too eventually. As soon as I find the right fabrics and have the time and... Anyway, I decided to go ahead with it and combine things and mostly just have fun.

The silk is dupioni and while it looks to be a lavendar color, it really isn't. It's a shot dupioni with sage green in one direction and a bright pink/red going in the other. This makes the fabric shimmer depending on the light which is always a lovely thing. It also gets me off of the hook with the typical 'purple was only worn by royalty' bit. =) I don't know if this actually would have worked but the dupioni was on sale for $2.40 a yard. And there was 18 yards. And it's 54 inches wide. And it's an extremely smooth dupioni. How could I resist? Unfortunately, the teal that was also on sale for the same price only had 1.667 yards. It will make a lovely shirt. Anyway, the purple will also be made into a lovely Vogue retro dress that I've been wanting to make and also a skirt and jacket. At least, that's the plan for now.

Anyway, while this fabric is rather lovely, it made finding coordinating colors rather difficult. I wanted to stick the sage green in there but couldn't find any fabric to match it at all. So, a neutral forepart and sleeves will always work and there was a possibility of sticking some color into it with beads or embroidery.

So onto the embroidery design for the dress. I wanted a nice border with multiple colors in it. It's very easy to find borders with only one color but multiple colors tend to be a bit more difficult. I found this wonderful website which has several borders that I'm hoping to use and picked this one for this specific project. Finding the embroidery thread was a bit difficult and is a bit grayer than what I was hoping for but it's still looking good. This was my first project with Gutermann embroidery thread and it is stitching out beautifully. The purple and yellow are Gutermann while the greens are Sulky. I can get the Sulky in bulk for better prices but for smaller projects, I will prolly stick with the Gutermann.

The embroidery on the purple will be edged with white dupioni piping to help define the borders. The embroidery will be in strips on the bodice, the guards going down the front of the skirt and around the hem, and also be used for the panes on the sleeves. The small photo is one repeat and an end while the pic below is a border of just the repeats with the pearls. It will also have crystals but I'm not there yet.

I love all-over patterns for the forepart and the sleeves so I found this blackwork pattern and tiled it. It creates a diagonal look but isn't too obvious. This will be for the forepart, undersleeves, and under the panes on the puff sleeve. I will also make a caul out of it. I included pics with and without a flash. The darker pic shows the design better but the lighter picture is closer to how it looks. Since the fabric is dupioni, it has a sheen to it that really reflects the light so the pic is a bit brighter than it really is.

The next fun part is planning out the beading. I try to plan it out as soon as possible so I can order all the beads I need at one time. It doesn't always work out this way. I came up with a plan for the purple but when the beads came in, one color really didn't match. I think I planned for that because I wasn't sure that it would work but I won't know until I get further with the beading. I also changed my mind about the beading for the white and threw in more of the silver beads, so I had to order more of them. Not a big deal but I missed out on the price breaks that Firemountain Gems offers and had to pay for shipping. So, since I was paying for shipping anyway, I got some beads for a different project. =) The first pic is the plan photo and the second is with the forepart actually beaded.



The white of the forepart is mostly beaded. I have to attach the gray guard and bead that and then attach the rest of the underskirt and bead up to there. I've left a gap around the edge so I won't have to fight with the sewing machine when trying to stitch the other seams.

The sleeves and caul are embroidered and one of the puffed sleeves. The sleeves and forepart were embroidered with stitch and tear stabilizer to give them a bit more substance. However, that won't work very nicely for the caul and the puffed sleeves so that is embroidered with Solvy. Great stuff because this stuff actually does dissolve. Take a look at the Kaylee fluffy layer cake dress page here if you're really interested, but in summary, test your products first before investing several hours of your time. I still have to embroider the other puffed sleeve and then I'm just going to stick them in the washer. It's a bit too much for me just to dissolve in the sink. Then I can start beading them. You can also see the diagonal look a bit more in the puff picture.

I haven't started beading the sleeves because I'm not sure about the pattern for them. I thought I brought that pattern with me but I cannot find it. I know I have plenty of embroidery for them but not sure about the exact pattern. I have one pattern drafted but I'm not too happy with it. I will wait as long as possible but most likely I will get the rest of my stuff back before I have to work on them again. Then I can be sure about the pattern. Most likely, I will take the pattern right off the sleeves I already have made up for my blue noble costume.

The embroidery for the purple is done except for the hem guard. I've finished the sleeve panes and now to work on the white again so I can dissolve the stabilizer and start beading. It will also allow me to cut up the rest of the white for the piping. Then it's back to the hem guard. I've been cleaning up the purple embroidery as I go too. This will be really helpful when I finally do finish so I won't have to go back and trim it all at the end. Doing a strip at a time is pain enough, having to do it all at the end might drive me over the edge. Not that that is a far trip... The two strips on the far right already have pearls sewn on so that's what the little dots are.

I've also been working on the partlet. I started off with the pattern just to get the proportions right. The next pic shows the two pieces that I am sewing together. The small one is the base and the larger one will be gathered in a grid to match the smaller one. The bottom piece is marked out in a 1.5 inch grid and the top piece is a 2 inch grid. This gathers it enough to be puffy but not be a big puffball. It's been marked with a blue wash away marker but that doesn't show up very well in the pic.

The back is now done and I've started on the front. I'm using a voile that is lightweight and flows nicely so it's puffing without actually being gathered. I'm including the light and dark pictures of the front because the light shows the color better but the dark shows the puffing better. This is also completely handsewn so far. I can control the puffing better by hand than with a sewing machine. We'll see if the whole thing gets handsewn. There will be beads where it's stitched down.

5-9-06

Progress is slow. I've started embroidering the other white puff and that is about half done. The pic shows it with some of the fabric hanging over the edge so it might look further along than half but only because the half that isn't done is hiding. It makes it look like I've done more than I really have. Two more days of actual embroidering and it should get done. However, because of work schedule and moving, it might take quite awhile to get done.

The partlet is also a bit further along. One front is done and the other one is about half done. Once again, it shouldn't take too long to finish but...

12-10-06

It has been a long time since I've worked on this!! I took it out of the box for the first time since May and it took me awhile to figure out where I was with it. Still not sure if I'm caught up. I wasn't exactly sure where I had left off, and the partlet hadn't been boxed up with everything else so I had already started something else by the time I found it.

So I started in on the sleeves. I went from this...                                        to this.

I've put the piping in on both sides of the lower sleeve and attached the upper sleeve just on the front seam. I've also put the piping along the armscye. This allows me to get as much beading as possible done before I sew that second seam and make it much more difficult to get in there and bead. I've attached all of the teardrops on the one sleeve and finished beading about half of the one upper sleeve.

12-18-06

I finished beading one sleeve up to the seam allowances. I'm leaving a generous gap so I can easily sew the sleeve and then will do touch-up beading. The other sleeve is just started so there isn't much to see. I've also included one close up of the beading by request, hope it's good enough, email me if it isn't. =)

1-8-07

The caul is done!!! My cat, Koko, had to have surgery at the end of December and so she had stitches that she liked to pick at. The options were to keep her in a silly, horrible cone collar thing that she absolutely hated, or let her sleep on my lap as much as possible. The sleep option worked the best most of the time. Because of that, I didn't want to cover her with my projects as I normally do. She doesn't like to be covered and we were trying to keep her as happy as possible. The caul could easily be held and not cover, or even touch, her. So, I worked on the caul and finally finished it this past weekend.

The caul is heavily beaded, same as the sleeves, and lined in white cotton. This will protect the embroidery and the beading on the inside and prevent knots from coming undone. Unlike the sleeves and the forepart, the caul was embroidered with wash-away stabilizer so it is very flexible. It made beading a bit more interesting and tougher on the hands but it was completely worth it. I am convinced even more that I do not want to part with it. It looks much prettier in person but I just can't get a good pic of it.

I took two pics of everything, with the flash and without. The flash washes out all detail but the color is much closer, at least on my monitor. And without the flash shows the detail with all of the beads but the color is way off.

The last bit of detail is the clips on the inside. It turned out to be rather heavy with all of the beads on it and I just prefer having the caul stay put. I have loops like this on my other two cauls and I really like it. I don't have to worry about the caul falling out. I've only had to adjust my caul once and that's because I pinned the hat to it on a pretty windy day. The hat caught the wind and everything slid off-kilter slightly. It didn't really need to be adjusted but we were just waiting anyway so why not. The loops allow the clips to come out for washing, I just prefer to not wash anything metal that I can possibly avoid.

I have a few pics of me wearing it just because it's so pretty that I couldn't resist and things do look better worn.

I also finished the upper part of the second sleeve and started on the under. I'm really hoping to get this beading done this week so it's construction and final beading for next week.

2-5-07

One sleeve is done!!! I thought it would be a lot further along than just one sleeve done by this point but other things keep coming up. But one sleeve is done!!! The cuff is beaded like the caul band but there is only one cluster of pearls center front. The others ended up being on the underside of the wrist and much more likely to catch on something so I kept it simple.



The other sleeve is stitched up and now I'm doing the fill-in beading. I left a decent gap wherever I was going to have to sew in order to make it easier to get my machine's foot to play nicely. Filling in along the top and by the cuff is pretty easy but filling in around the elbow is a bit more complicated. Not really complicated but it takes a bit more time. And cursing. ;)

The seams are stitched down so they will stay in place and not bunch up after being worn and washed a couple of times. The ties are stitched down pretty good so they shouldn't pull out. I like to make the loops in the bodice be the weak point rather than the ties. If something has to pull out, I would rather it be the loops than the ties or fabric.

2-20-07

I've finished the other sleeve! Okay, it was done last week but I didn't get around to writing this until this week. Basically, everything here was done last week because I really haven't done a thing in the past week on this project. So there really isn't much to say. I have two finished sleeves which is really exciting. I think they turned out pretty good and I'm really quite excited to have TWO finished sleeves!



I also worked on the forepart. Sadly, this should be done too but it's not quite there yet. I have attached the lining to the forepart and the piece of underskirt that is directly next to it. The fill-in beading has been done for one side and over half done with the other side. The guard has been beaded a little to tie it into the sleeves and caul but left mostly plain so there is no problem with adjusting the length. I haven't completely decided if I'm going to sell this dress but I'm leaning more and more towards selling it (have been for awhile actually) so easily adjusted lengths are a good thing.

4-30-07

I took some time off of this to finish nrgd. Now that it's done, I have at least a little bit of time to work on this one again. However, I spent most of this week celebrating that I was done by playing The Game. So this is just a little update. I had put pearls on the front guards but decided that I didn't like that so much. I came up with a new plan and have one of the guards half done. The beads blend in much better than before. This should give it sparkle when being worn but won't distract from the embroidery design. That's the hope anyway.



I also finished the beading on the forepart but it was about five beads along the very edge. Hard to believe that I stopped when I was that close to being done but apparently I did. Anyway, that's done and ready for the rest of it to be sewn together as soon as my machine gets back from the shop. She's just in for yearly maintenance and should be back this week sometime but we'll see.

5-22-07

I finally got my machine back about a week ago so I was able to sew again!! I had done some beading but figured out that it would be much easier to finish the binding on the edges first and then bead so I didn't get too far with that. The forepart is sewn together except for the waistband. I like to finish the bodice first to get an exact waist measurement. I'm going to try to alter the bodice a little but I'm not sure how much altering I can do before the embroidery gets messed up so I'm waiting on that and working on the bodice. The embroidered strips are in process. I took pics as I went and that always explains things better than if I try to write it out so...



I decided to do the center strips a bit differently so the white wasn't quite so glaring. The white has turned out to be a bit more of a contrast than I thought but I'm still liking it. Might try to dull it down a bit but it works.



Updates to follow!

                                       


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