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The Your Wardrobe Unlocked Single Pattern Project dress has been chosen! AND it's one of the ones I hoped it would be! (even if it's not my very first choice, *le sigh*) It's the 1860s day dress! And a translation of the pattern is already available from the YWU'd website :-D Did you know the main body of the dress is faille? I didn't, but I've been longing to use faille in a dress ever since I learned what the fabric was 4 years ago. I investigated the stuff 'cause of a pastel slate 1875 bustle dress (that I am still somewhat in love with) from some museum exhibit catalogue (that I can't remember the name of) which was described as faille. To me the dress looked like taffeta from the weight and stiffness and the way the light reflected from it, but I asked around and low and behold faille is a fabric you can still buy! (Silk faille is expensive, of course, and Fashion Fabric Club is very unreliable in what it describes as faille :-S) Anyway, faille feels like the PERFECT fabric to do all the 64-75 frou frou with- it keeps pleats well, just like taffeta and is less slippery to work with. Plus, Fabrics.net has a lovely selection of pretty colors. I'm enamored of their pastels - which is odd if you know me, ivory is about the only pastel I usually wear :-S
Anyway, neither FFC nor Fabrics.net offer a tan faille, so I cannot copy the dress exactly (which is ok, the patterned velvet trim would be difficult anyway... ;-) so I need to find a taffeta (for the bodice under the bolero) that coordinates with one of the faille fabrics available. In case you're interested in the swatches I'm none-too-patiently waiting for, here are my current thoughts:
I'm really hoping that one of these combinations will "sing" to me ;-) Some of the colors just look scrumptious on-line... *hope*
Anyway, back to my current projects. Still not quite done with filing and organizing the elliptical/early bustle research, I expect some (slight) progress tonight. If I'm going to be working on the YWU'd pattern contest, y'all will be seeing more of the research then I expected in my last post ;-). Crossing my fingers I'll get the zipper finished on the 1950s jumper. I totally wussed out last night after the gym and lounged around reading a book instead of being productive (I planned to get the back of the jumper re-fitted...). Oh well. I think I may have too many open projects at the moment... 'cause there's two more that are in-process - still need to finish the 1904-ish petticoat and fiddle with the 1430s gothic fitted dress pattern - so I can actually USE it as a pattern ;-). Plus there's the drawn thread cuffs which have migrated somewhere. I thought cleaning my sewing room would turn them up. Evidently it needs a more in-depth cleaning to regurgitate the lost cuffs :-S (Have I whined about how much I hate cleaning? Why doesn't stuff just stay clean after you've cleaned it once?!?)
- Mood:
excited
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Comments
http://www.decorativesilk.com/scripts/p
nice price for silk taffeta though... the satin I keep oogling from Decorative Silk is so expensive I don't think to check them for normal stuff... Thanks!!
warm fuzzies re the money. Been there, many times :-(
But I've ordered swatches for a future project of mine from
http://www.nyfashioncenterfabrics.com/g
And the prices are between fifteen and eighteen-something dollars a yard less. I know US$39.99/yd isn't chicken feed, but it does represent *some* savings if one of the fabrics there will work for you.
Rennisance Fabrics I absolutely adore - it's my current favorite fabric store, I always check there first. The selection isn't what many of the other on-line stores have, but they're always aimed at the kind of sewing I do, and Diana's really nice. Despite not obviously doing swatches (which imo are ABOSLUTELY necessary for on-line fabric shopping) if you e-mail her though the "contact us" page and give her your address, she's very happy to send swatches :-D
Hyena is expensive. very very expensive. But their quality is impecable, and their color selections are FANTASTIC. (And I'm still drooling over some of their silk brocades - have been all year... but at 75$ a yard, it's hard to get 8 yrds, no matter how much I _want_ it for a Brugundian ) I love their search-by-color mechanism accross the top of their pages - just 'cause so often I'm looking for things by color. Otherwise it's a bit of hunt-and-peck by fabric type though the links in the left-hand column.