One Victorian ball gown nearly finished!

I had a day which involved a lot of huffing and puffing and became reminiscent of curtain making yesterday.  If you have ever made curtains you will know what I mean....metres and metres of fabric, sitting at a machine running it all through.

Then there was the metres of fabric being pleated to put into waistbands.  All in all it was just metres of fabric and somewhere underneath it all was a 'me' trying to get it all done by the end of the weekend.  

It's early Sunday morning now and I am waiting for eldest daughter to arrive to get her dress in the same state as the unexpected dress.  She phoned last night and was in the same state as me, metres of fabric being gathered into the waistband.  She did say however, that she was sure it would all be finished by Friday, but then she does have a couple of days free in the week and I dont.

I had left enough seam in the UD to put in the boning by hand so that was a plus.  This hadn't happened with DD and I was left with the job of trying to attach boning in a ribbon casing, without it showing on the outside.  It doesn't sit right to my eye and we will decide this morning whether to just take it out and leave that for another day, as eldest will be wearing a corset underneath next weekend.

I pleated the UD skirt into the waistband and then pleated another five metres of muslin/linen (I'm not really sure what it is as it wasn't labelled) into another waistband for the petticoat.  I then sewed five metres of cording into the petticoat and it does give it a bit extra 'poof'.  I did read somewhere (forgive me if it was on your blog/site, I did try to find it again but it is lost in the internet ether for now) to put a layer of net between skirt and petticoat to give extra poof but after all that pleating and gathering I had lost the will to live so there is no net at the moment, although it may happen later today if I get everything else done.

So here is a pic of UD at the moment.  It needs a final pressing, it needs fastenings on bodice and skirt (more hand sewing of hooks and eyes) but I do believe it is finished unless I measure the skirt for the third time and it really is too long in which case I have decided to make pin tucks in the skirt to take some of the length away.

I'm hoping to get an inbetween pic of DD today too, although the big pressing will take place after hooks and eyes so the best I can offer is pics of the finished dresses on the girls after the weekend.

Youngest daughter is away again this weekend and I still haven't done the hem on hers.  I was hoping to be able to pin the hem with her in the dress but it looks like it will now be a case of sew it and see as I am not going to attempt it after Tuesday when she returns!  I have just realised I don't have the petticoat for her so sometime today I will have to go through the boxes of costumes to find the hooped petticoat!  Arghhhh!!!!