Long time no post, but I have been working on stuff

Yeah, I know, it's been a while.  I don't have any pictures yet of my red and black modern dress (mostly because someone else took pictures of me, so they're on someone else's camera/iPad/whatever.  Pictures will hopefully come for that.

With that dress in mind, I learned a few things:

• Piping needs to be 1/8" wider on each side (so 1/4" wider).  I took into account the allowance for the cord width but not the cord circumfrence, so my 5/8" piping was only 1/2", which messed up seams, which meant I ended up with an extra inch of room in the end.  So yeah, tiny things like that are important.
• The way they wanted me to attach the front and back shoulder seams don't work with piping.  Pretty much it had to be done by hand after the facing front and back and the outter fabric front and back were sewn together.  More work, but it was worth it.

So yeah, I would recommend this dress.  I'd take some width off the hem (I took 2" off of each side except for the back seam) but other than that, it was a nice dress pattern to work with.

Onto more Victorian things, I have started my red and black dress.  Progress is slow because my wrist has been on the fritz, but I do have the skirt sewn except for the side seam and waistband, and the overskirt is cut out and the side pleats are basted.  The bodice mockup is in the works, and I'm trying to find a way to alter my glove pattern since my fingers are longer than the original's.  I plan on using the leftover black sateen for the gloves and trim, if I have enough, since that will be more cooperative than making 1/2" strips of black twill.  Plus it will be a nice contrast.

I'm basing the design off of the lavender dress in this fashion plate:

I won't be putting in ALL of the stripes, and it looks like based off of my practice run, the pleats on the skirt trim may not work well with the fabric I'm using, so I may just use the triangle motif and run with that.

I think a lot of my time, like with the modern dress, will be cutting and making bias strips for trim...which I really should get started on so I can finish the overskirt.  But if (I hope) there aren't any fitting problems with the bodice or the corset (yeah, I need to put some boning in it, but it looks like it'll work this time) this project shouldn't take nearly as long as the first one.  I'm improving!

Pictures to come when I actually make something interesting...