I'm still working on Naomi's wedding gown - along with a duplicate for a friend. After making the underdresses, petticoats, and lining the overskirts, it was time to address the sleeves for the over bodice. Each sleeve would be made up of at least three parts; the basic sleeve, an embroidered gold satin puff, and an embroidered puff of the fine skirt fabric...
The wrist edges of the sleeves were finished first. I originally used a different gold trim, changed my mind about it, so had to pick everything apart in order to add the new trim and the narrow lace ruffles. The reworked version looked so much better....
The most time-consuming part was embroidering a vine motif along all the pale yellow satin ribbons I'd sewn onto the gold puffs. The embroidery was intended to mimic the vines embroidered on the sari fabric. Each puff took three evenings to embroider...
I don't usually have a plan for exactly what I'm going to use, so will lay out the parts every now and then to decide what direction to go in.....
The pale yellow puffs are meant to mimic the pattern on the bottom of the skirts. I made the first four out of the sari fabric, lined with a sheer cotton, and had hoped to use a fancy stitch on my sewing machine to do the diamond patterns, but it was a disaster and I had to throw them out and start all over from scratch. This second set still has the pale yellow sari fabric, but it's lined with regular white cotton. And all the lines had to be embroidered by hand....
Making progress on the embroidery and beading....
With all the puffs finally finished it was finally time to start building up the sleeves. First the pale yellow puffs were basted in place, along with the cream trim, then it was stitched on the machine. I like to baste every single row because I want everything to sew perfectly on my machine, and I don't trust only using pins. It may be a lot of extra work, but the result is always worth it.
After gathering the gold puff near the top, I added seven loops of pale yellow picot ribbon, and then a row of gathered white muslin to represent the 'chemise puffs'....
After gathering the gold puff near the top, I added seven loops of pale yellow picot ribbon, and then a row of gathered white muslin to represent the 'chemise puffs'....
A bodice with the sleeves sewn in....
Close up detail of upper sleeve....
And Bianca checking the fit of an unfinished bodice, over the underdress....
I prefer to do as much embellishing of the bodice before the skirt gets sewn on, as it's a lot easier to handle without all the skirt fabric getting in the way. But I can only take beading so far, and keep it well back of the seam lines, because my machine hates sewing over beads. Anyways, even though things are finally starting to take shape, there's still lots to do
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