Victorian Vexations

I'm continuing to struggle with the Victorian remake.  If it wasn't for all the work, and the time it would take to make a new skirt, it would have been so much easier to just start from scratch.  But I liked the fabric and colour, so am determined to complete a finished outfit.

The jacket needed a blouse of some sort underneath, so I designed a sleeveless top with a stand-up neckband and lace ruffle at the neck.  I ended up sewing the lace ruffle onto the finished neckband after the fact, as hand sewing would be so much more precise....

I had the basic jacket bodice sewn together and tried it on, but it was too small under the armpits.  I had designed the jacket pattern on a naked doll, so had not accommodated for the extra thickness a blouse underneath would add.  So I had to sew strips of fabric onto both the front underarms, to add a 1/4" more width. Of course that meant adding the same extra strips to the lining.... 

Then there were the sleeves.  I tried everything to make them fit the new doll - including covering the side seams with fabric so the sleeves could have snaps around the wrist, and adding a wide lace ruffle at the wrist to lengthen the overall sleeve - but in the end it just wasn't going to work. They were still going to be too short, and the bottom openings wouldn't be wide enough, with snaps, to fit around the lower arm.

Fortunately I still had a very small amount of the original fabric, and even though I had had other plans for it, I decided to make entirely new sleeves. I didn't have the exact same pink  trim, or pale gray satin ribbon, but I found some that was at least close colour-wise....

Now I can finish the jacket, and hopefully there are still enough scraps of the stripe fabric left over so that I can make a tiny, matching little girl's dress.