Mistress of Disguise

I have figured out the Ivy Leaf yardage problem! So my planned dress was never meant to be a 1-to-1 copy of the Oak Leaf gown. I was using the oak leaf embroidery as inspiration, but the skirt styling was going to be much closer to this gown. The overdress is going to be shaped like an ivy leaf, so pointed down at the center front instead of split like that Worth gown.

I have a lower-quality green taffeta in the stash that is pretty close to the color that I want to use for the fashion portions of the Ivy Leaf dress, and I just realized that I can use it as the underskirt layer, since the black lace that goes over it will tone it down and hide the quality disparity. Hooray! Ivy Leaf Dress is a go!

I will pull both taffetas out of storage on Saturday morning, before it gets too hot. This coming week I will try and bang out the pattern for the skirts, as well as draw out the embroidery design.

Amazingly, the wrapper fabric arrived at the local distribution center this morning, and is now marked as Out for Delivery, which means wrapper sewing this weekend! Hooray! I guess that means I should actually look at the pattern to see how involved it really is, though my one friend who's made it said it went together easily and quickly. I'm optimistically hoping I can get it all done in a single day, though since it's a long weekend, I don't mind if it spills over into a second day.

If I have the time this weekend, I'll try and size up the maternity corset pattern and possibly do a mockup. I don't expect to get a lot of the assembly of the final version done at all, but I would like to finish this corset by next weekend. I'm just about 7 months along, so I can't really dally on getting it done if I'm ever going to be able to wear it!

I ordered some of this ribbon for the top edge of the corset, and I'll use pink flossing on the boning channels to tie it in.

I'm really happy to be working on so many projects again. I feel like I'm getting my mojo back.

A fortuitous Joann's email flyer let me know that their cotton flannels were 50% off, and would you look at that, the color I want has the exact yardage in stock that I need! And it's out of stock everywhere except the store by my house! So, I put in the online order immediately and picked it up after work. Hooray! Now I just need a couple of yards of black velvet for the trim, and I'll be able to start on the wrapper!

I found the 1893 edition of La Mode Ilustree that has the French printing of the De Gracieuse pattern that I'm planning to use for the maternity corset, which meant that I could actually read the instructions! I am so happy about that, because on the illustration for the corset there is very clearly an elasticated panel on the side, but there's no pattern piece for it included. The instructions tell you how to make it, and they tell you how to assemble the belly band and the nursing cups. Whew! Glad I was able to clear up a few mysteries. There is a new mystery though, a mention of "steel legs" along with the busk and baleens. I'm not entirely sure what it's referring to, and my google-fu is failing me. I think it's referring to steel bones that go around the center-back lacing to reinforce it, since almost all the extant corsets I've seen that use whalebone for the body of the corset do use steel around the eyelets.

I also found a bunch of extants online with really good interior photos so I could study the construction, so I'm feeling pretty confident that I can tackle this project now. I already have some coutil at home, now I just need to get the elastic, and I think I'll be ready to dive in.

Amazingly, I found this extant in a Dutch museum that is a dead ringer for the 1893 pattern I'm using from a Dutch magazine, which is kind of awesome.