Project in the future

The supposed end of Project Runway is coming soon, although my sewing teacher hasn't said anything about a real date yet, so my classmate and partner in sewing crime, May, hopes that we get another month...or two. She's working on five different after five dresses, so she has had a much more difficult time at it than me. But what I've seen of it is gorgeous.

In the end, yes, again, I amended my Victorian dress plans. After doing a mockup of the bodice, I decided that I didn't like how my torso looked in my corset, and I want to make a new corset before finishing the outfit. So there's that. The skirt is almost done, though.

So what's next? Actual working on stuff wise, not much. Planning wise...oh, I have plans.

Your Wardrobe Unlock'd, a wonderful resource site with articles for sewing and historical clothing, has a contest every year, and this year one of them is for Steampunk Historical Inspirations, or some combination of those words. So I plan on participating.

I have an idea for a roughly 1874ish steampunk military dress. I am not a huge fan of the brass and leather look, it's just not me, so I'm going more towards "ficticious military uniform" route rather than traditional steampunk. I've been using inspiration from both military outfits of the time and riding habits, some of which were heavily inspired by military outfits. My dress won't be for riding since I want it to be a bustle dress, but I may be convinced to make riding pants as an alternate outfit. Am I getting on a horse? Are you kidding me?

I was planning on starting this next year, but since the contest ends in February of next year, that won't work. So I've been trying to plan ahead for when I do have the funds to buy the things I need for this outfit.

Really the only things I can do now are the mockups for the bodice and hat, undergarments (not my corset yet) and gloves. Well, I'm going to TRY is what I'm saying. We'll see just how good my hand sewing skills are. This project hindges on me learning a lot of new things, all of which can go horribly south and the way of my original plans for the purple and yellow dress. Why can't I do easier stuff? Hello, my name is Andrea, and I'm an overachiever. Nice to meet you.

Resurrected dress

After a few weeks of no productivity whatsoever, I had a thought. The Victorian dress I abandoned could be revived, but in a different way. I still have six yards of the yellow fabric left to use, which is enough for a skirt and bodice. What I'm going to do (though it pains me to do so) is take apart the pleated skirt and reuse the fabric for the rest of the outfit. I realized a couple of days ago I had no intention of going back to that pleated skirt, and if I don't want to waste a ton of fabric, I need to cut my losses and reuse the fabric in some way.

So this is what I had in mind:

Yellow jacket bodice and purple vest, but the vest will be attached to the sleeves and the jacket body will be an optional overlay. This way the vest can be an optional standalone if my torso gets too hot from the extra layer. The skirt will be yellow with a purple ruffle on the bottom (I've sworn off pleats for a while) and trimmed in some way with any extra yellow fabric I have. The overskirt will also be purple, but I don't know the design yet. That was another reason why the previous project flopped, the overskirt.

This project will also be how quickly I can put this together. I had told myself that I wasn't going to participate in the Project Runway thing anymore, but now one of the new students wants in on it, and I can't just not finish when she's starting from scratch this late in the game. So...can I do this in a month or so? Yeah, probably. It's stuff I've done before, and if I can get a mockup pretty much done in one evening, this bodes fairly well for the rest. I hope.