Mistress of Disguise

I finagled the embroidery design for my skirt yesterday by pasting together some art nouveau clipart of water lillies, and I think I have a pretty good base to work off of now. 

I managed to find out where the inspiration skirt is located (The John Bright Collection) and the inspiration bodice (Antique Dress) which gave me many more views to investigate. There are some great high-res photos of each, which revealed that the skirt embroidery is actually all beads! I'm going to do applique to save time, but I've been toying with the idea of beading the outlines of the appliques to add a bit of sparkle. I'm not sure if that would be too fancy for a day-dress, though, so I may just stick with outlining it all in machine satin stitch. I do hate the back of the original skirt, though, so I'm going to change up the seaming there to mirror that on the front.

After staring at my inspiration bodice for a while, I realized that I actually have the perfect colored taffeta already in my fabric stash somewhere, I just have to dig it out. I don't know how much of it I have, though, and I'm worried that it won't be enough. I'll have to excavate it and see what I'm working with. I also have some dark green taffeta that I can use for the applique, as well as some white for the lilies, so I think I can actually get away with MOSTLY using Stash materials! Huzzah!

Didn't get the skirt mockup started yesterday like I wanted because my left ovary decided to stab me all day and I was feeling lousy. Hopefully I can start on it today after work.

I have no idea where my 1890s petticoats are, so I may have to make a new one. :-/ But, I think I have some cheap taffeta in the Stash that I can use for that, since I have a damned taffeta addiction and buy a bolt of it pretty much any time I go to the warehouses. I know I have a bolt of dark, dark brown taffeta that turned out too dark for the project I wanted it for, and I can't imagine EVER using it for anything else, so I may end up with a brown petticoat. I'll probably end up making it the same way I made my cotton eyelet petticoat, which ended up with such a pretty shape.