The Finished dresses

Yay! All three dresses are finished and photos have been taken. For these photos we went to Hulne Park Abbey, which is an abandoned tower in the Northumberlands park lands. Pretty happy with the final dresses, i love the blue dress that Esther is wearing, but ellies front fastening went a bit wrong, hers was the dress i had the most trouble with. Still i think i got some nice photos done :) Had a fun afternoon with the girlies anyway :)

Esther Peeking through an archway

Esther, Ellie and Laura together in their dresses...

Running off towards the abbey

I took many more photographs, which are all on my flickr account here

Ellies first fitting

Had the first fitting For ellies dress, which wasnt finished when the others tried on their dresses for the first time. I think i have some work to do with the front but other than that it fitted okay :)

Showing the en fourreau back and the neckline decoration.

First Fitting of the dresses :)

So i had my first fitting of Ellie, Esther and Lauras 18th century outfits. Unfortunatley i havent started ellies dress yet so there wasnt so much to try on for her, but it was great to see them all in the finished stays and take some photographs...

Ellie in her blue toile de jour stays.


Laura in her front opening pick stays..


Esther in her yellow silk stays...


Pinning lauras dress onto her for the first time. It Fitted really well :)


Esther, holding her dress on. I havent done the hooks and eyes down the front opening but it does fit at the front pretty perfectly.

Cant wait to see them on when they are all finished :)
And then finally, even though the dresses arent finished we played around doing a couple more photographs, heres a small preview, but please head over to my flickr account to see them all :)

Lauras dress progress

Just a quick photocentric post, showing Lauras dress with sleeves and bow decoration.


All i have to do now is decide what kind of sleeve flounce i want to do, but after that its finished :) Yay.

Lauras dress

Just a quick update to show the progress on the 2nd of the three dresses, the one for my friend laura. Esthers dress is just about finished just needs a final fitting then hemmed, but photos ofthe finished dress wont be up untill i have finisshed all three.
Lauras dress has a chiffon underskirt and a flowered caraco type jacket. I havent added the sleeves yet and the stomacher is going to have a bit more decoration, but its just about finished.

The back, with en fourreau pleats and a short peplum skirt.

The from decoration so far, i think i am going to add a bow or something to the front. At the minute its not looking quite enough. To me anyway...

My stays

So i made these a year or so ago but i realised that i never actually posted any photos of them because at the time i didnt have aproper shift type thing to wear underneath it. Anyway, just took these quickly this afternoon so they really arent that great, but i thought i would still post them :)
Sorry they arent great quality...

Progress on esthers dress.

Okay, so i am making some progress with the first dress of 3 for my friend esther.
I already posted a link to the photos of the stays that i made, esthers were the yellow ones, but heres another picture of them now shown on top of the simple shift that i made. The stays seem to be crinkling slightly at he front but that is just because of the dummy its on, which obviously is much more rigid and doesnt lace into the stays the way a normal human body wuld. Plus, this mannequin is the same size as me and esther is a fair bit smaller than me so her dress isnt going to fit as well as mine usually do, obviously.
Okay, so ater he underwear i started making the actual bodice, starting with the en fourreau back.




Heres a few photographsof the current progress;


Pinning down the pleats to make up the en Fourreau back.


The back pleats after being sewn down, not sure how clear they are but i think you get the idea...


This shows the ribbon being sewn down around te gathered sleeves to look like...

This... I think it looks okay, the ribbon looks a bit puckered though, but i thnk when theres actually an arm in te sleeve it might straighten out...


Around the necckline there is also a double gathered trim with a thin ribbon of the same colour sewn down along the edges.

Just a closer shot showng the gathered trim and the ribbon.

And finally a photo of the dress with the underskirt on my mannequin, as i said before esther is smaller than me and my mannequin so it doesnt fit properly at the front, but heres a side view aanyway...

Okay, well thats the progress so far, i am pretty happy with it so far i think :)