A new chapter

A new chapter has begun in my life.  We have packed up our house, sold it (a true miracle) piled everything and our 6 dogs in the cars and made a cross country trek to Utah where Adam had a new job and we bought a house that I had not yet seen in person.  The house came with the previous owner's dog and 4 cats (thought two of them are very shy and make themselves scarce).
 

This is Patches.

This is Baby.

This is Noonie.

The house is a small cabin on the mountain in a very rural town.  The town has no stores whatsoever.  The closest grocery store is about 20 miles away but the larger town with more options and better prices is an hour away.

The view from the back balcony.

I no longer work outside the home.  It's something I've dreamed of!  But I am able to waste a lot of time so I need to get some sort of schedule together so I waste less time and have more structured free time so I can accomplish more of the things I would like to do.

I can't wait to see how this chapter unfolds.

finished

So it's really easy to let too much time pass between posts and if I wait much longer, I probably wouldn't post the finished pictures of my dress.  I finished it just 2 days before the event so I tackled a bonnet (the yellow one), I put big pockets on the apron and made the corded petticoat.  It is pretty comfortable and not nearly as hot as people said it would be...everyone was hot but I was no hotter than anyone else and didn't really sweat while some others were drenched with sweat.

Here it is without the apron or bonnet.

 And with the apron and bonnet...see that black twig looking thing in front of me?  Well, I thought it was a twig and was about to kneel down but I realized it wasn't a twig, it was a big snake!!  We just looked at each other for a couple seconds until I regained my sanity and ran away.  

I love the dress!  It doesn't fit quite as it should, but that's ok.  It took about an hour of scrubbing the hem to get the red clay stains out of it, but there are no stains. :o)

I got a lot of compliments on my dress.

seeing red

I have never been one to like bright colors in my clothes. A little is ok...but a bright red dress...a whole dress, that is way overboard.  But as I've worked on it, it's grown on me and I am confident I won't feel too out of place in it.  

Anyway, so far as the sewing goes, work had slowed a bit because all of the work left for the last few days has been handsewing.  Yep, no more machine work.  The shirt gets attached by hand and all the hemming and the hooks and eye...that's all that's left!  It's hard for me to believe that I am actually pulling this off.  

Each little pleat gets its own stitch to the bodice...well, two stitches, one on top, one at the piping.  I have the top row done and maybe 1/5 of the bottom row.  

Back detail

Front detail

I used to absolutely hate clothes!  When I got married, I really hated trying wedding dresses on.  All I knew was that clothes didn't fit right and I had no idea what I liked, what would flatter my body type or anything like that...so I just hated all clothes.  But now that I know what I like, I can see the appeal of buying such a special dress.  Though this dress looks nothing like a wedding dress, it reminds me of one.  Probably because it's so thick and doesn't fall flat.  

It will still take a lot of work, but I will have it done by the time trek rolls around.  I can't believe it!

Getting so close!

The bodice is done enough to look done.  Still needs hooks and eyes in the back, the sleeves need hemming and a little touch up hand sewing.  

+

The skirt in front is one that fits me...the skirt in back is 144" around and needs to be brought in to the skirt size.  The pattern taught me how to cartridge pleat to accomplish that goal.  It told me to measure and mark  1/4" all the way around and to draw a line 1/5" down and again 1/2" down from that.  Then on the top line, to hand sew in one hole, out the next, in one, out one and so on until I went all the way around...and then do it again on the lower line.  Then you just pull and it folds like an accordian.  

Pleated with 576 tiny pleats.  Amazing!

Only about 4 steps left!But they make take a while.

Handcarts (and a sleeve)

My husband is also involved in the trek I'm going on and making the dress for.  When I got home from work last night, there were some handcarts in my driveway.  I was so excited that I flew down there to try one out.  My husband caught me playing. You can actually see my smile in this one.  I'm such a geek. lol

The other three that were in the driveway were just wheels on bare metal frames.  Adam and the person in charge of Trek were going to build the boxes for those.  They worked all evening on it.

They finished all three boxes but none are attached yet as they didn't have the right kind of metal tapping screw.

They actually bought the wheels from a company who makes them for covered wagons and are very good quality.

And while they worked on those, I worked on my dress.  The three sleeve pieces are finally finished (except the hemming of the sleeve edge...I'm waiting until it's attached to the dress so I get it right).

I tried it on!

I hope you had a great Memorial Day.  We had a very busy, tiring but good day.  We woke up early and with the help of 8 or 9 church friends, we were able to saw down our neighbor's tree.  A giant chunk of it had fallen in a very bad storm we had last week.  She's a single mother of 5 and couldn't afford to do anything about it.  We mulched what we could and cut the branches into firewood.  The trunk is still in her yard (we can't do anything about that but at least she and we don't have to worry about the damage the rest of the tree falling would have.  Took 5 hours.  Well, actually, it's not done as there is a large pile of branches sitting in our yard but people were too exhausted to continue.  We finished at 12:45.  We had a gang of people coming over at 1 for a bbq lunch.  We were planning on eating outside under that giant tree and its shade...but there was no shade anymore.  So we just ate inside.  

My mother-in-law, brother-in-law and his family, neighbors who are like grandparents to my husband and his siblings and a family of family friends came.  Their 16 year old daughter was in a serious car accident 3 months ago.  The doctors didn't think she'd make it.  She had a broken eye socket, brain injury, broken ankle, broken back and lost several feet of her intestines.  She was in a coma for 5 days.  But she is recovering quite nicely. She's fairly traumatized from her experience and is finding it difficult to cope with her new reality but was in good spirits during the visit at least.  They are a neat family.  

After the visit I managed to get my house back in order, go weed in the garden a little and then work on the sleeves of my dress a bit.  

The bodice is not finished yet.  It still needs piping around the waist and the arm holes, the back needs to be hemmed and have the hooks and eyes added, the side/front panel seams need to be handstitched in the ditch to the lining, and the neckline will need hemming.  It is done enough that I was able to finally try it on though and to my relief, it does fit!

The unfinished back

I love these lines!

Finally, it's on!  (It was midninght and I was falling asleep but had to finish it enough to get it tried on.)

So now I am moving on to the sleeves even though I'm not quite finished with the bodice.  The sleeves, while they don't have lining, will be thick since there are three sleeves stacked on top of each other in varying lengths.  

This is the macheron (the cap sleeve).  It gets three deep tucks and each tuck will have piping on the bottom of each tuck. So I'm doing basting stitches to make the folding easier.

Since the pattern has dropped sleeves and I had no idea how low the drop was, I couldn't tell if I would need to add length to the sleeve or not.  So now that I was able to try on the bodice, we pinned the sleeve to it to check.  I added 4 inches which will give me the length I need plus hemming room.  The black piping is where it ended before my addition.  The piping will make it appear intentional, I hope. ;o)  And the oversleeve is in place.  Just need a mancheron.  

more of the bodice

So work continues on the dress.  I recently had to unpick a lot of work because I did it wrong.  So I am finally back to where I feel like I'm making a bit of progress.  

Here are all the gathers at the bottom of the front.  I hand stitched the gathers even though it wasn't in the instructions because if one of them broke, it would ruin the whole look.  It went pretty quickly. I did it through the backside so you can't see it on the front side.

The shoulders called for gathers but I toyed with pleats and eventually went back to the gathers because they're easier.  As of right now, this piece is waiting to be sewn to the lining.

The back pieces have gathers at top and bottom as well.  They got resewn to the lining last night.  This dress has the closures in the back so I will definitely need help getting dressed.  

Finally touched the sleeves last night.  There are 6 seperate sleeve pieces (3 for each side).  A sleeve (full length), an oversleeve (like a 3/4 sleeve) and a mancheron (a cap sleeve of sorts).  Each starts at the shoulder seam so that's gonna be a heavy sleeve! lol  Guess what...there are more gathers in the sleeves!  They sure liked their gathers!  I got the gather stitches in both sleeves and over sleeves last night but haven't gathered them as of yet.  The mancheron is kind of fancy...no gathers, just a few tucks and lace.  I sewed one of the sleeves up to try it on last night.  I have big hands so I wanted to make sure my hand could fit through the opening.  It did.  I need to lengthen the sleeves as my arms are also longer than the average women's apparently.   The other area of concern for me is the area in front of my armpit.  I feel like the incredible hulk in a lot of women's shirts because it's so tight at the armpit that I can't move very well.  It felt like it would be ok...but once it's attached to the bodice (which I haven't been able to try on yet) will be the true test.