Mrs Maupin

Not having the Home geek around is obviously not good for me. It seems my motivation flew away in his suitcase

I did get some progress on the Madras dress - only for two days I was un picking every stitch I made because I kept making mistakes, or not thinking through how I would assemble the whole thing. Today was better - rather weirdly as I had the kids around and it's usually hard to concentrate with them in the house. Everything on the main dress is done except for hand sewing a lot of little things. The detachable overskirt is assembled and needs a waistband. I think I have - theoretically - solved the problem of attaching it to the main dress.

The Chardon gown is now on the backburner - the silk organza I got from PureSilks was totally NOT the swatch they sent me. By some sheer luck I had also ordered another fabric that ended up being said swatch. It took abotu two days for them to accept that I send the fabric back (at my own expense), and they should send me the other fabric instead. and refund me the difference. Fingers crossed for that.
Needless to say, they have been moved to the "oy, beware !" side of my providers. Okay if I'm not in a hurry, and have some flexibility as to what I really want only. *sigh*

Today was a bit better, energy-wise. I suspect yesterday's ballet lesson helped - it was still intense, but a bit better than last week. After physical therapy this morning I dragged myself to the market - good food always puts me back in a good mood. I only really needed parmesan, and a few ready-to-reheat meals. We had tourtons (fried pasties with potato-based filling) for lunch, and tomorrow evening, since we will be coming home late form Heimlich's physical therapy, we'll have pumpkin filled fresh italian pasta. While I was there I grabbed some veggies - mainly because they come from a local producer and are generally tastier than what we can find at the Saturday market - the tomatoes are fantastic, and since the HG isn't home they're just for ME ! Fresh tomatoes with a few leaves of lettuce and a dash of olive oil, walnut oil and balsamic vinager, mmmhhh....

My Mom went into the hospital today, my dear friend gets her MRI, so today is the day we shoudl find out  a little more about both of them. Fingers crossed and all that. Thank you for your kind words and prayers.

Not much sewing happened this week-end. I had a fitting appointements, which went extremely well - except the jacket mock-up being off, for an unknown reason the bust ended up waaaaay too high there. Next time a mock-up seems off, redo it, I'm probably right.
Dealing with *people* then wiped me out for the evening, I fell asleep on the couch while the HG was out to get pizzas.

We did a good deal of gardening, too. Since it's still hot and summery, we decided we'd try for some radishes. We planted a good half of the flower bulbs. We'd like to plant the rest on the other side of the house to make the entrance more... civilized ?
The HG put up the net under the hazel tree, and we picked a basket of hazelnuts from the ground. I'm not really lookign forward to cracking them all open and roasting them and removing the outer skin, but it will be worht it in the end. Homemade nutella, plus, those hazelnuts taste about 300% better than the store-bought ones.

I have cut almost 25 layers of tulle for the Madras dress... and I'm not entirely sold on the result. The skirt itself is cute and airy, I'm just not sure how to tie it with the white sergine and the orange madras print I have planned to use...
I am probably going to banish it to the naughty corner and work on Chardon today, since I got the fabric for the petticoat in the mail. Because  I thought I had lots of white fabric, but I did not have enough for a large crinoline petticoat, at least not in something that did not weigh the same as a dead donkey. Going to make said petticoat adjustable - since I'm making this, I can at least make sure I can wear it if I somehow get in the mood for a crinoline dress.

I just finished scanning all the fashion plates I bought during our vacation. That just leaves me with all the bound magazines and a huge pile of hat plates Lady Darkstone dumped on my lap before summer. I'm not even attempting to put them on the website. That's what FlickR is for, right ?
They were marked 1922 by the selles, it doesn't seem too far off... but other plates had a wrong date, so proceed with caution.
Now I want to sew little girl's 1920s dresses

The Gold waistcoat  : I'm finishing handsewing the collar, then I need to bind the armholes, find buttons, make buttonholes.
I started draping another wedding gown, one for my portfolio and for september's bridal fair - I needed to get a rough idea of how I wanted it to calculate yardage and order fabric. That is going to be a LOT of silk organza. And a lot of tulle.

I did some tidying up in the workshop - a giant crinoline of doom suddenly makes you realize you have too much clutter in your workspace ! I made a huge bag of scraps to give away to Toad's preschool, a small pile of shiny/silky/taffetas-ey fabrics I might use for bowties and the like, and a small bag of printed cotton scraps I want to use to make an 18th century "patchwork" pocket. Not all prints are period correct, there will probably be one period pocket and a "sentimental" one in whacky fabrics, like the scraps from the pink Eiffel tower skirt I am wearing today. Which remidns me I shoul trace the pattern of this skirt, because it is awesome and I need to remake it.