The Wedding Dress- the Final Stretch

Coming up to the final stretch here!   That is: getting that monster panel of a skirt onto the bodice, which means pleating about 175" of length, that the skirt edge now measures, (after reducing it) into the 26" that the corset waist measures.

The answer is cartridge pleating, this type of pleating, used mainly in costumes and period clothing reproduction today, serves several purposes.  It reduces a very large length of cloth much more effectively than simply gathering and the construction causes the pleating to stand out and creates volume. Here, it will give a very pretty and controlled volume to the skirt and I can make full use of the uninterrupted panel of embroidery.

I do a little test and find out that the floral motif in the solid section of linen does not take to the pleating at all. I decide to pick it out. I discover that all these flower petals are incredibly, & beautifully, padded out with layers of under stitching in a cream colored cotton yarn. The embroidery covers this pad stitching perfectly and it is a lot of of work to pick out. But I can't pleat it properly otherwise. So I pick out all the petals that intersect the pleating area.

The beautiful padding stitches- partially removed

Then I line the skirt, I was lucky to find in the perfect shade of china silk. It is simply attached at cut edge and the layers merrowed clean. I also just merrowed the lining hem, I am starting to feel stressed.

The pleats are formed with a running stitch, by eye,  as evenly as possible and using super strong thread. Then stitched, all by hand,  by catching just the top fold of each pleat to the bodice. My hand sewing is rusty - not much call for it in leather (best if there's none).   Here's another test shot- kind of a straight cross view:

At the bottom you can see the tabs that will lie under the skirt.

The silicora thread only comes in black and  dead white, but the non-match won't be a problem

Inside showing final cartridge pleating

outside  of cartridge pleating, my hand stitching sucks but it will not show( at all) when on- That's the beauty of this beast!

The front of the skirt has no pleats and is stitched to 'float' under the extended front of the corset

See!

On a hangar, you don't get the effect of the pleats

I still need figure out what to replace that zipper pull ribbon with!

Next : The Finishing Touches.

The Wedding Dress- the Final Stretch

Adventures with a Cutwork Tablecloth, part 8

Looks like I am not going to get this series done before the Honeymoon! I will try and condense it a bit and stick mainly to pictures.

I left off at the almost finished bodice here.  Now to finish it off:

oops, remember to change needles when working with silk chiffon!

Clean finished Bodice.

Since this is a corset that is cut at the waist, it will dig into my hips if not tabbed, Tabbing also prevents what could be called "reverse" muffin-top.  The tabs - one side is silk over canvas to prevent any possibility of show through on skirt.

The tabs are simply finished on the merrow machine for less bulk and hand stitched to top of inside binding edge.  A waist stay tape is added to keep bodice snug and anchored and prevents it from riding up.

This is the inside of the finished bodice:

Prussian tape zip pull for fittings - only way I am able to zip it up without help!

Now to tackle the skirt, which as shown here is a huge rectangular swath of embroidered linen, the center section of which made up the bodice embroidery. (you can see the curved edges in some of the earlier detail photos) I did minimal cutting to retain the motifs, and scooped out some more at the front so skirt will be shorter in front.  (You can see the original curved edges of the central embroidery on the 2nd image in this post)

The skirt panel is huge, measuring about 185" on the long sides. I say 'about' because when I fold it in half lengthwise it I discover the sides are not the same length and the motifs do not align. Seems in laying out the embroidery those many, many years ago, rather than flipping the (asymmetrical- as it turns out) pattern. It was rotated. So now there is about 4" extra fabric on each side of the skirt, but extra is at front on one side and at back on the other side. Somehow a teeny bit of the motif was traced out on the pattern twice. But it messes with me. So I have to fix it:

whoa!

what gets removed

that zig-zag machine comes in handy

almost invisible

The finished skirt panel.  Opening is quite curved now since I removed a lot of fullness from the waist edge,  removing little wedges and zig-ging it like I did the embroidered section.  Too much fabric to be gathered to corset even with the cartridge pleating I am going use.  The seams will disappear very nicely into the pleats.

Some of our custom Wedding work in Leather.

Adventures with a Cutwork Tablecloth, part 8