Completed beaded sleeves
Ta-da! Mom beaded one sleeve, I beaded the other. We are certifiably nuts. She, even more so, because she’s also beading the forepart. And I married into nutjobs because my stepmom-in-law helped bead the forepart and called today to say she could come back this week and bead more. Wow. I am the luckiest (and craziest) gal alive :-).
To assemble the sleeves, I first spray-based the beaded and pearled silk onto white twill. Then I sewed that up, and sewed a bag-lining of white cotton. Sewed those together. Found some lace in The Stash, but it was a very bright white, so I dipped it in a quick tea bath to tone down the color so it better matched the ivory silk. Then I sewed that to the cuffs.
Now I need to put the ribbon ties on both sets of sleeves, plus sew some hooks on the sleeve cuffs so they close neatly. When Mom finishes pearling the trim, I can sew that on the side openings of the hanging sleeves. Not to mention trim the bodice and skirt.
In the meantime, I’m going to make the underskirt base out of white twill. Figure I can use the same pattern as for the farthingale, just a skosh bigger and make it fasten up the back. When the beading is done, I’ll spray-baste and sew the forepart to the front.
Not sure if I’ll start the hat or ruff after that. Hat is technically more important as I need to cover my head. Except I’m still not sure what kind of hat I want to make! The ruff I know all about. Yet I can’t put the hat off.
I have a surprisingly large amount of the pearled ivory silk leftover (probably could have managed with 2 yards instead of 3). So I might make a soft attifet out of that, simply wire the edge. Could alternate pearls and the red beads along the edge, if I have time to get fancy.
It’s not the more coronet-like fantasy I had, but I don’t have a real construction design for that either. I *have* made attifets before, so that is a known quantity, wouldn’t take much time. And time is not on my side right now. Less than two weeks to go. And all next weekend will be occupied with partying (yay!).