Buttons and Bows!

I'm calling the polonaise done! I found the cutest kitty buttons on eBay. They even look like Victorian cats. And now there are bows too. Next up is a new hat!

Polonaise almost done!

I got a lot of sewing done this weekend and the gown is almost finished. It needs buttons (ordered and waiting for delivery) and some bows (ribbon ordered and waiting for delivery). I didn't have enough lace left to trim the entire skirt, so settled for the lower edge, then used my wonderful lime green fuzzy trim. I love it soooooo much!

I also added one more ruffle to the bottom of the skirt, made from the kitty fabric. The facing was supposed to be done in the fashion fabric, but I wouldn't have had enough material. I had to piece the heck out of the ruffle that I made to get it long enough. I didn't take another photo with the added ruffle, but it looks great. I also made a small stuffed kitty that will go on my hat. I think I'm going to use my bat hat for this one and just replace the bat with the kitty, but I might do another hat as I have other patterns I want to play with.

Skirt is done - and tunic in progress!

It took most of the weekend, but I finished the skirt. Sitting on the floor pinning ruffles was challenging with my hip still stiff, so I only did 3 tiers on Friday. Saturday I was able to sit in a chair to do the remaining 7 ruffles. I think Petunia looks like a can-can dancer!

I had some problems with it. The directions said to fold up 1/4" twice for the ruffle hems. I serged, pressed, and folded, which was only about 3/8" total, and the ruffles were still too short for each marked line, so I had to adjust. I was really careful marking all the lines for ruffle placement. I'm going to add one more layer at the bottom in my cat fabric.

On to the tunic. I really didn't want to do a mock-up. Or flatline. I'm not sure I even have enough stash fabric to do it. I held up the pattern to Petunia and decided the waist was long enough (Victorian patterns tend to be short in the waist on me and usually need lengthening), and figured I'd adjust the rest with the darts. Well, it turned out PERFECT! I might need a couple tucks in the neckline, but otherwise I think it's going to be great, and looks wonderful with the skirt.

I had challenges with this too. I painstakingly marked everything with my tracing wheel, and all the marks faded so quickly I couldn't use them. Sigh. The inverted box pleats at the center back stymied me for some reason and it took about an hour to figure them out. I even had to resort to pleating up a piece of twill tape for practice! But I won in the end. 

The sleeves are mostly done and ready to set in, so that will be the next step. I found some adorable cat buttons that I'm not sure will look good, but we'll see. If not I will likely just cover buttons.

Skirt progress

I finally got some sewing done! For the polonaise, I only bought fabric for the tunic, and was determined to use stash fabrics only for the skirt. It's been dubbed the "frankenskirt" because it's two different kinds of linen and some cotton. I tried it on over my lobster tail bustle, but there wasn't enough length allowed in the back to fit over a bustle, as you can see in the side photo.

This skirt has 10 (!) tiers of ruffles. It took forever to cut them all out to the lengths specified in the pattern. Here they are ready for gathering. I ran all the long edges through the serger, and pressed up one edge and machine hemmed. I decided I didn't really want to gather all that fabric with the traditional method, so I bought a ruffler foot and a gathering foot for my machine and will play around to see if one of those works. Here are the hemmed and pressed ruffles waiting for gathering. I had perfect colors in stash to go with my cats in space fabric!