mlsdesigns | A busy day :)

I had today off work, so I decided to cram as much as possible in :)

In the morning I did a humungous load of washing, then got down to some serious work on my cross barred sack. I've been slowly plodding away on trimming the front pannel of the petticoat, and finally finished it yesterday:

I've tried to recreate the original as accurately as possible, measuring the sizes of the frills in my book and scaling up to me size :) In case any one doesn't have the Kyoto book, I'm making this dress: http://www.kci.or.jp/archives/digital_archives/detail_10_e.html It's not quite right, the wavy line above the bottom frill isn't wavy enough, but I'm happy with how it's turning out so far!

I'm leaving the petticoat for now, and moving onto the dress, because I want to see how much fabric I have left after all the trimmings. If I need to I will piece in the top of the back, but I'm not sure what I'll be using. I have pink or beige silk taffetas that would match, but I have enough to make whole garments, so don't really want to use any up if I don't have to. I'm toying with the idea of using some of the other patterned silk taffetas I have left from other projects, that I have no use for. It would look very odd, but, as long as it doesn't show through...!!

Today I cut out the bodice lining, and hemmed the silk fronts in place, and I've pleated the back (the plaid made it so easy to make it match!) and started pinning it to the bodice, ready to stitch tomorrow hopefully.

I had to stop work just before 5pm to get ready to go to a local history society that was having a talk on a famous local Sufragette. A friend from dancing and I decided to go dressed up ;) We took along our banners, and the speaker was so pleased to see us! The rest of the audience was quite tickled with the idea too :) I got Clare to take a photo when I got back home: