Reading my blog for the last few weeks, you might have been mistaken for thinking that I was purely a historian, and never sewed at all.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  In reality, I have done little else but sew for the last few weeks, and have been too busy with it to blog about it! One of the main things I have been working on is Carolyn’s dress, the art-deco inspired extravaganza.  It’s looking amazing, if I do say so myself (also, Mr D and the bride and a few other people who have seen me sewing it have said so, so I know it is true) 😉 I’m so excited that it is finally all together and looks like a real dress.  There are so many different pieces to it that it took a long time to come together and feel like a garment. It still needs lots of finishing touches: beads and sequins and corset backs and linings and a dozen tiny finishing bits. Sadly for you though, I won’t …

Carolyn’s dress is very, very close to done, and over the last week I’ve been working through the last of the design issues. First, what to do with the detailing above the bust? I had the ‘brilliant’  (well, it could have been brilliant, you never know until you try with this stuff!) idea to layer different silver fabrics and then add a bit of beads and sparkle on top of it. I looked through my stash of translucent silver fabrics (and yes, it is a bit scary that I have a whole stash of translucent silver fabrics) and found these: I liked the way the two fabrics layered over each other, the foiling just showing through the organza: So I patterned up the bodice detailing, cut it out, sewed it together, and carefully pressed it. Then I pinned it to the dress and had a look at it. Blech! I bet that Snow White’s evil stepmother had bodice detailing just like that on her wedding dress!  It definitely has an evil-queen batwing aesthetic about it. …

The whole bodice and belt of Carolyn’s dress will be beaded, and the belt is fastening with a vintage buckle, so I got to have lots of fun picking up sparkly pogey bait to show to Carolyn so she could decide what would go on the dress. First, we picked buckles.  The two best ones I could find were these: Carolyn, having excellent taste, of course picked this one: A few of the diamantes need to be replaced, but that is easily fixable. With the most important thing selected, we moved on to beads. Each bead will be centred on one of these beautiful, pearlised pailletes: The colours of the beads will range from silver beads on the design around the bust and on the sash, through to silver greys and clear glass beads. The silver grey and pale grey glass beads will help to accentuate the curving lines on the bodice: Clear beads will add extra sparkle: We had originally considered including dark gunmetal beads, but Carolyn decided that they were too stark, and …