At last, the end of the green and peach silk bliaut construction posts. Every single one of these photos was taken under pretty extremely sleep-deprived conditions, in a variety of forms of artificial light. Sorry about that.
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| I couldn't fit the whole skirt flat in the floor space of our area. |
I needed to trim nine inches from the length of the skirt, but I didn't want to actually
trim nine inches, because a) that is a lot of cutting and this fabric is violently opposed to just lying flat where you put it and b) that's like seven yards of hemming I don't want to do and c) I was gathering the skirt the morning of the day we left for Vatavia and did
not have time for that kind of shenanigans. Instead, I chalked a line nine inches from the top edge of the skirt, and ran a very sloppy gathering stitch along it with button thread (I live in fear of the gathering thread snapping). I think I used four total threads to gather the skirt down, and tied them to each other so none would slip free while I manipulated the skirt later.
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| A+ stitchwork right there. |
To support the skirt on the inside, I used a polyester ribbon (I
know, but it was what I had handy, and it'll probably be next year by the time I finish the brocaded waistband). I made it 40 inches long, fearing gathering the skirt down too tightly to fit over my shoulders—getting into the dress is typically fine, but wriggling out is harder if the waist doesn't give enough.
No photos of the next step, but I pinned and gathered and scrunched and fiddled with the skirt fabric until it fit evenly around the band, and stitched it down with a combination running/backstitch.
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| So many pins. |
I left the pins from the first pass of stitching in while pinning and arranging the bodice lining to hide the ribbon and allow me to overlap the bodice pieces once the skirt was attached. And then...another round of running/backstitch. The skirt top was starting to look pretty messy on the outside, although the folds actually hid a surprising amount of stitching.
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| Yep, it's a blob. |
Next I gathered down the lower half of the bodice silk along the hemmed edge, and quickly tacked it in place between each eyelet.
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| Despite appearances, this is still the dress fabric. |
Not-quite-lastly (it should have been lastly, but measuring is not really my strong suit) I tucked under the last edge of the bodice fabric and tacked it to the skirt gathers, finishing the edge and hiding my increasingly clumsy stitching as I did. I'm actually really satisfied with how this element worked—the tacking stitches are all but invisible in motion, and often hidden under my ceinture anyway.
And then I tried the dress on (unlaced), and discovered I needed to cinch in the sections of skirt supported only by the internal waistband, to keep them from drooping and falling outward to display the Frankensteinian innards of the skirt. I ran another length of button thread through the ribbon and gathered it slightly, tried the dress on
again, and found I had still left too much slack. So there are now three layers of gathering threads in the skirt sides, but I had no trouble with the skirt gapping or turning outward, so the fiddling was worth it.
As far as wearing this gown goes...I've yet to attempt it, but I believe I may always need help getting laced into it. I can leave one side completely laced, and cinch it down once I'm into the dress, but I can only lace about a third of the way down the other side with the length of braid I'm using while leaving enough slack to get dressed. Maybe with breaks to rest my arm, because I
really can't use both arms to lace...but the easiest way to get dressed is to get into the dress and have someone nearby finish sewing me in.
I think that makes me a lady.
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