almost done!!

Just the stomacher is left to do on the curtain jacket.  I finished the sleeve ends yesterday. The elbow dart took a couple tries, and I'm still not totally thrilled with it, because it gives a VERY sharp curve over the elbow, almost a 90-degree angle. But I am leaving it, since I have too much else to do and also because I stuck pretty close to the diagram, so hopefully the way I now have it is accurate. The jacket in the book does look like it has a pretty sharply angled sleeve.

So now I need to find something sufficiently stiff to interline the stomacher with, and putting it together will probably be cake! I tried the jacket on (properly, over my stays) and pinned a scrap under the lacing to approximate the stomacher shape, so now I have a working pattern.

The only thing I wonder now is, should I get dressed up and take pictures of myself as soon as it's done? Or just wait and expect to get photos at coco?

Oh, also related, is it worthwhile to bring my tripod to coco?

Done!

I spent about an hour and a half on the stomacher today.  I thought I had lots of curtain scraps left, but I really don't at all!  So I ended up cutting the stomacher on the cross-grain so I could get the motifs placed where I wanted.  It irked me a little to do this - if it wasn't going to be covered with a lacing ribbon, I probably would not have.

I interlined it with a piece of cotton twill from which I removed the seam allowances, and lined with the same plain linen as the jacket.  I folded all the seam allowances under and placed the pieces WS together, then edged with point a rabbatre sous la main.

So, now I have a few accessories to sew, but I'm making them strictly away-from-the-house projects (for work and the playground, etc.).  Which means my (over) 2 month odyssey of handsewing is over.

Before this, I had never entirely hand-sewed anything.  I was terrified to start this project, but I wanted to do it to see if I could.  And I was really surprised! Doing all that handsewing was really enjoyable! It was slow, and it was fiddly at times, but mostly I had a lot of fun, and now I am not sure what I was so worried about. I am such a convert - and I can't wait to do more handsewn projects!

Now that I've done it, handsewing a whole dress just doesn't seem like as big a deal anymore.  I don't know if that's because I had built it up in my mind as being scary when it isn't, or because I undervalue myself with this perverse notion that if I can actually do something, it's probably not worth much.

Backyard pictures will be up as soon as I can arrange a photo shoot!