lovely new-found blog

rather off topic, but i thought i'd share with you a lovely new blog i found today (whilst telling the OH that I WAS DOING UNI WORK HONEST!! i don't really think he believes me...)

www.chezbeeperbebe.blogspot.com has some fabulous homemade and recycled things, she does post a lot of family things about her children etc too, and its a fantastic read! i might have sat and read the whole blog this afternoon........if it was a book it would be un-put-down-able!

I really like the spelling and number bean bags, they're very cute! i really do feel the need to make some, but i think the OH is getting a bit scared now with my sewing cute baby things! hehe

shiny new fabric time!

well i did a very bad thing on my day of on saturday....i went to the factory fabric shop......

i went the intention of buying calico for the elizabeth dress toile (not that i did one for the marie antoinette dress but apparently one can never underestimate the importance of a toile, or rather one doesn't get the extra marks from uni if i don't make a toile, so guess i have to do one for this dress)

unfortunately i saw a biiiigggggg box of marked down ends of rolls, discontinued fabric etc before i managed to get to the calico, and it had lots of pretty fabric in! i found 100% cotton velvet that would be perfect for the elizabeth dress, and marked down to £1/mtr i couldn't say no! I managed to find just enough for the dress, cut very carefully! found a few odds and ends of damasks and other prettys too!

luckily i did eventually manage to get to the calico for my toile at guess what, £1/mtr again!!

the OH wasn't too amused at my mass fabric buying, but i managed to justify it with 'i've bought it all now, so i won't have to go fabric shopping again this semester'!

paper pattern and toile will be done tomorrow, so pictures of those will be online tomorrow night!

marie antoinette inspired dress - corset

front of corset

back of corset

side of corset (or rather side of 'pair of stays')

Well i finally got a whole day off uni to concentrate on the marie antoinette dress on thursday, so i sat down and got as much of the corset done as is possible for one person in a day!

I managed to get the pattern drafted, calico cut (the two inner layers which hold the boning, there will be a lining layer and an outer decorative fabric layer hiding these two), boning placement all marked, all of the sections sewn together, and the boning channels sewn (note for the future - its probably easier to sew boning channels then sew all the pieces together...i think i chose the bloody hard way.....) and finally all the boning slide nicely into the channels and the ends sewn up!

I did run into a slight problem here, i bought my boning on a roll (poly boning, yes i know not very historically accurate, i'd have loved to use wooden bones to be accurate, or even just metal bones, but they were REALLY expensive, and my skint student status must be remembered!) because my boning was on a roll it was curved, so when i put it in the boning channels in stayed curved, and the whole corset erm.....curved. (note to self - find out how to flatten boning!) I pinned the whole thing to my mannaquin in the hope that it'll somehow mould but i'm not betting on it!

Next on the ever- growing list of things to do - cut the outer fabric (going to be the same as the dress fabric) and find a pretty lining fabric (yeyyy fabric shop mission!!), sew all four layers together, place eyelets and sew binding! I'm thinking of separating the bottom into tabs like most of the 18th century stays i've found online, so it looks a bit more authentic?

day off tomorrow so hopefully i can get plenty done then!