Making a Late Victorian Evening Bodice

Hello there and welcome back to the Closet Historian and back to my sewing room for another costuming project. That's right, I'm finally getting back to my costuming. I know it's been a little while, things have been sort of hectic, but I made this mock-up bodice back when I was making the mandragora gown. I made this bodice in black as a mock-up for that silk bodice. This is actually in a black polyester moire from Mood Fabrics and I was able to pick up more of this fabric to be able to make a matching skirt for this bodice. And of course I can clearly wear this black bodice with the mandragora skirt, the silk skirt as well, but I wanted to have a black skirt to match this and then that will become the Whitby gown. I've decided that's what it's called as in, you know, Whitby England where Whitby morning jet jewelry comes from and where I believe Dracula landed in the UK when he did in that book. You know what I mean, I think it fits the vibe. And then of course to round this out because I do this with all my costumes, I'll be making an evening bodice to match this skirt as well. So I'll have a day bodice, an evening bodice, and then the skirt that matches both for this black late Victorian gown. So let's go ahead and dive on in. And of course I have a sketch for you to show you what I've got in mind for this gown today, inspired by various historic examples, especially this gown which of course looks to be black or another dark color and has this great garland of fruit and it looks like grapes and grape leaves cascading down the front of it and it has slightly different sleeves, one that seems more sheer than the other. I did see other garlands of flowers on gowns like this and these lovely springy ladies here. I was kind of going for an autumn version of these sort of more springy flower encrusted gowns and you can see the larger sleeves here must mean the 1890s, but there were smaller sleeved things going on the 1890s as well, all the way up to the turn of the century where there were almost sleeveless gowns and gowns like this where it was just almost a strap, although this gown again has a weeping garland of flowers going on here. This dress looks like turn of the century to me, perhaps early 1900s. The pigeon-breasted almost front here is giving me that impression along with the Gibson girl hair, but these sleeves are still kind of almost 1890s, it all sort of blurs together here around the turn of the century in my opinion, and for this gown I'm really going for end of the 1890s, start of the 1900s, not really pinpointing an exact date, just going for a general sense of that time period, I'm not trying to create something exceptionally accurate. I always say with my costumes that I just want to look like if I were placed back in time on accident in a time travel sort of situation, I wouldn't necessarily stand out, so nothing is absolutely wildly anachronistic, but I also don't like to adhere strictly to, well, any rules honestly, because I make historic inspired costumes for fun and to wear for like, I don't know, themed parties or Halloween in the future, not for any sort of reenacting or anything like that, and this pink Worth gown that I will link to below really inspired me for the style of sleeves I'm going to go for on mine and using the beaded fringe like this on the sleeves which I do end up using in this gown today. Now I will be using the same evening bodice pattern that I used to make the Mandragora evening bodice here, I can put a card up to that video here so you can see me go ahead and make this pattern, this is based off of a pattern, a commercial pattern that I will no longer be using from this point on, this is kind of the last costume using these patterns that I have fitted over my current corset, in the future I want to make a new 1890s corset and in addition I will no longer be using truly Victorian patterns because the owner has said some things I just do not agree with, um, so I won't be supporting that company anymore and I will no longer be using those patterns, so we will go ahead and draft everything from scratch from period, uh, examples in the future if and when I do any more costuming from now on, I probably won't be able to make anything else until I move, even doing this project is kind of a surprise because I didn't think I was going to get any costuming in this year with all the other things I have going on, but the only modifications I'm making to this today, you can see me kind of trimming a little bit away from the front waist here and I just trimmed the side seams a tiny bit along the waist along the back as well and I'm just trimming the arm side a tiny bit, everything fits pretty well, I just wanted to bring the, like from the waist down, the tiny bit of flare past the waist of this in a little bit because it flared just a bit too much in the mandragora gown version, so tiny little refinements to this pattern but otherwise it fits quite well over my current corset, um, which is an 1880s, uh, inspired corset that I made based off of a pattern from Nora Waugh's corsets and crinolines and while I do really like that corset, um, and it's like scaled up from exactly 10 inches larger than the historic example that was in that book, um, so it's a very accurate corset, uh, shape wise, it's just not the best shape for me, I think, because I'm actually quite a swishy, squishable person and I think I could get more curves out of a different 1890s pattern, so I want to try a different corset in the future and of course these costumes that I've made here will fit over this corset but if I change the silhouette dramatically then I'm going to have to have all new patterns anyhow, so it all kind of works out that I need to make new patterns for any future costuming anyhow if I'm going to change my structure underneath, um, once I make new corsets things are going to fit differently anyhow, might as well start all over with brand new patterns that don't have any icky associations, um, for more details on that, uh, you're going to have to kind of google the drama, I'm not into the drama, so I'm sorry I'm not going to get into the details of that here, the only other change I need to make to this is to change the back of this so that instead of having a 5 8 seam allowance I'm going to change it to having a half inch seam allowance, just because the center back of this will be closed and I will have hook and eyes down the center front of this instead, but as far as assembling and constructing this costume it will be very similar to how I've made any of my other Victorian bodices if you've seen any of my costuming here on the channel, I've cut out all the panels for this bodice out of my black moiré fashion fabric and then also a cotton muslin that happens to be black, mood does have a black cotton muslin and so I try and stock up on that for costuming when it is available over there, but I'm using white cotton thread here so you can see what I'm doing, staying within the seam allowance I'm going to go ahead and take about half inch size stitches, if not a little bit smaller, and just go ahead and baste all the way around the edges of these, basting my interlining and fashion fabric together, and this is just cotton gutterman thread that I have, um, ran through some beeswax, and I'll be taking my pattern here and transferring my darts onto the inside of my front bodice, on the left and the right has two darts on either side, so I'm just going to transfer those over with a little bit of chalk tracing paper and a tracing wheel, I find this is just the easiest way to transfer these strangely shaped and kind of curvy darts over onto my costuming projects, and because there are two layers going on here and I don't want them to shift too much as I pinch and pin my darts, I will just go ahead and run some thread, some basting through these darts as well to hold the two layers together before I pinch and pin them, and my beeswax did finally bite the dust, uh it's very very old and dry and sad, so I had to get a new like thread beeswax thingamajig, and a piece of beeswax to run my thread through because this one was really giving up on me, so I had to throw it out, it's just off camera here, but I have a new one, thank goodness, for any future basting I need to do, you can buy pre-waxed thread as well, uh which does sound like it would save some frustration, but I'll go ahead and pinch and pin my dart, and then I can start pinning my panels together as well, pinning my panels together, it's almost a tongue twister as usual for me, so I'm pinning the side front and side back along the side seam here, I believe, and I will go ahead and sew those, again I like to batch process as much as possible, so pin everything I can, bring it over to the machine, sew everything I can, then iron everything I can, you know, do things in batches, I find it helps me keep organized and speeds things along of course, I'll just sew my darts over here on the machine, just starting at the large end of the dart and sewing off the tip, just like I would sew a normal dart for normal vintage clothing, of course this is vintage vintage clothing, aka antique clothing, although this is a polyester moiré as previously stated, sadly silk moiré, which was a thing, especially black silk moiré for morning and half morning gowns, is no longer very easy to find, and even if you could it would probably be hundreds of dollars a yarn, so sadly this gown is not made of silk moiré, it's made of polyester moiré, I wish I could find a rayon at least, maybe one day, but of course that is part of what makes this gown incredibly inaccurate, is the fact that it is made technically out of polyester, all the trimmings on this and all the methodology of putting it together is all historically accurate, because the trimming will all be in silk and cotton, but, well in glass beads, but the uh main fabric of the whole body of the garment itself is polyester, even if the interlining is cotton, as you can see I sewed my center back seam during that round as well, but I'm taking everything I just sewed, clipping any curves and pressing my seams open, clipping anything where it needs to lie flat, and then I will actually whip stitch all the raw edges inside of these seams with again the cotton thread, this is one of the ways that seams were finished in historic late Victorian sewing, sometimes you see raw edges and seams bound in silk binding tape as well, which would be an even finer finish, and I do have rayon seam binding, so it's something I could do, but of course I'm trying to um kind of find a compromise between historical accuracy and saving some time, because uh there's a lot of things to make and only so many hours in uh in a life, you know, I will go ahead and pinch and pin the other dart for each side of the bodice as well, because I sewed one at a time for each side, just to keep things from getting confused, but I will slice down the dart fullness uh up to about five-eighths of an inch away from the top of the tippy point, and then press these open, and then this is where I will begin whip stitching of the seam allowance, after I have these pressed open, putting a Victorian bodice together like this, whether it's a day bodice or an evening bodice, is rather kind of routine for me at this point, I have made several now, I went from having never done any Victorian costuming to having done quite a lot, just because between the cicada gown, a cicada gown I did three bodices for, an evening bodice, a ball gown bodice, and a day bodice, and then for the mandragora gown I made the mock-up, which is now the whippy gown, the actual day bodice, and the actual evening bodice, so I've made several bodices now, and the process is rather uh routine at this point, so kind of just going through my routine here, and my dart fullness is going to overlap just a little bit, so I'm trimming that down so it's not too bulky here, and I am just whipping around the raw edge and not stitching it or felling it down to the interlining, I think technically you could, but back when I first was doing research on this, it seemed that they were just whip stitched and not stitched down to the interlining anyway, and it was just left free in here, and part of that is because usually when you stitch the boning on, the boning is again not stitched to the interlining, it's just stitched like kind of loosely to the seam allowance itself, and it kind of floats inside of the bodice, I'm sure that the Victorians had reasons for doing it this way, and therefore I have always done it that way as well, but I've whipped all of my raw seams for now, and I need to start stitching some more seams again, so I'm going to sew my center back pieces to my side back pieces here, which is a bit of a curve, sort of a princess seam along the back, this is when princess seams started, where the name princess seams come from, comes from is actually um around the late Victorian era, because they're named after Princess Alexandra I believe, um and her gowns that were often fit with princess seams, although princess seams have been a thing longer than that, I think that's just one of the rumors of the origins for the name princess seam, but again I'll stitch those, clip my curves, press everything open, and again whip stitch the raw edges inside of here, I do like using white thread so you can see what I've done, but it does also create a sort of Frankenstein's monster effect inside my garments, so things are a little bit Tim Burton in here, which I don't mind, but you could also use the matching color thread, you also could put in a full lining in one of these, um it's not something that was done actually historically, very few historic like Victorian era garments actually have a full like a bag lining inside of them, if anything it's usually a flat lining that's like incorporated with the binding along the edges, um so it's not really very common to have a full smooth lining on the inside, there is kind of a principle which we'll get into a lot more later with this garment, where if something is not going to be seen, it's only finished well enough that it will hold up, the other thing to remember about, especially couture gowns, things like worth gowns from this time period, oh here I'm whipping the boning in, again I'm just sewing through, this is a plastic boning, um but I'm sewing through the boning itself to the seam allowance, as you can see this is not being stitched down to the interlining, it's just being stitched down to the seam allowance, but yes I'm going to bone all of my seams on this, and I'll even bone the darts as you've seen me do in other bodice videos, but yes the thing that you notice very quickly when looking at historic garments, looking at the insides of historic garments especially, is just how slapdash sometimes they seem they have been put together, um very special evening gowns and sometimes even things like worth gowns were only intended to be worn maybe once by their very very wealthy owners, perhaps they would wear a gown once or twice and then give it to someone else in the family and hand it down or away or put it in a trunk, which is why we have so many nice gowns, um so these things were not meant to be hyper durable, they certainly didn't have to go through a washing machine, they were not intended to be washed, this is kind of the origins of couture is still treated today, a lot of couture is not like you know meant to be washed in the same way that we wash our clothes today, these things are meant to be worn once or twice and then retired because that is how ultra high fashion works unfortunately, it's not very sustainable uh in general and that's why things like full linings were not introduced into garments like this, despite finishing the raw edges in some ways, again it's not you're not thinking oh this needs to be worn for the next 25 years uh maybe two to five years at max, but anyhow I've just been finishing the very front edges of this garment with a facing, I cut that out of some polyester shantung that matches the black of the moiré quite well, I just cut about a three inch wide facing to go ahead and finish the front and then I will sew a quarter inch boning channel along the very edge of this to be able to put a piece of steel boning in here that will keep my front lined up and straight and smooth when I put all the hook and eyes on here later, so that's what I've been up to while I've been rambling away, so yes just a quarter inch boning channel along the center front to slip in a piece of steel boning to keep this all smooth, I will just turn the raw edge of that facing under and fold this flat and then I will actually fell this down to my interlining, I'm not sure this is how they would have done it in the Victorian times, but uh most of the bodices I've studied are actually back closing because that's how I've finished most of my evening bodices, but for this I really just wanted to have it hook down the front and then there will be a hook and eyes on the front of this, um so you won't actually see most of the closure in the front anyhow, so I figured might as well be able to do up the bodice myself, which is nice, saves my mom some time from lacing me down the back because usually I have my mom help me on photo shoot days, she's the one who usually has to lace me into my bodices and play ladies made for a moment, but I'll just go ahead and fell that folded edge down to keep this nice and smooth and finished on the inside, it seemed a reasonable way to me to finish this off and I am just felling this through only the interlining, so none of these stitches in this chartreuse thread will show on the outside and you can see I don't have my shoulder seams sewn yet, everything is still quite flat, I like to keep things flat as I can for as long as I can, although there is boning in here now, so we're starting to get quite curvy, I will go ahead and bind this bottom edge while we're here, but again before I sew those shoulder seams, I'm just going to trim off anything that got extra down here so that the line along the hem is smooth, and I cut two inch wide strips of bias out of the Mandragora green silk and then folded and ironed that into bias tape that I will go ahead and attach right sides together along the bottom edge of this, so I'll pin that into place along the curves of the bottom edge of this, stitch that on and then I'll turn everything to the inside and hand stitch it down again to the interlining, and I will just end up felling that down as opposed to slip stitching it, because again felling things is how a lot of stuff was finished in the historic past and therefore I feel free to go ahead and do the same, so yes over here on the machine just using regular black all-purpose Gooderman thread, which is what I've been using for this entire project other than the basting, and just my 12 stitches per inch, my kind of standard stitch length over here on the machine that I like to use, I'll just stitch this half inch away from the edges, make sure I leave my needle down and turn around the point at the center back, it isn't very pointy point, luckily the center back of this particular bodice, I do usually like to have pointier points, but I'm not very good at finishing them, I'm not patient enough, um so it is nicer to have a more more of an obtuse angle, something that's like 90 degrees or larger, because small angles, while they look very pretty and bat-like, are kind of irritating to sew, but I will clip all my curves and corners and then go ahead and turn everything to the inside, one of my pieces of boning was just a tiny bit long, out of the way, there we go, turn all that bias onto the inside, of course the other edge is folded and finished, press down, so again I can fell this to the interlining along the inside here, although the front points on this are quite pointy, so that was fun for me to try and do my best on, honestly I need a class, some quilter needs to teach me how to do fine points, it's part of the reason I don't like doing applique in general in life as well, because little fine points things, somehow my brain can't wrap around the geometry required for how to fold bias into tiny points, or anything into tiny points really, which is a shame because I do like them, link me to your favorite how to get around tiny points video below, but once all of that is felled down, I will finally sew my tiny little shoulder seams together here, they're very small here for the evening bodice, because it's just a strappy little uh, you know, heavily boned historic tank top basically, but after I have those stitched together and pressed open, I can go ahead and bind the top edge as well, so I'll do the same thing up here, this really turned out to be a mess, I don't know what was happening this, the, on the evening I did this, I don't know where my brain was at, but it was not functioning at top capacity, who knows what kind of PMDD fog I could have been in at the time, this was weeks ago, I have no idea what was going on with me, but a lot of this is kind of like pieced and sad around the curves and corners of the top of this, but you know, I just put little pieces in there, stitched everything down, and again you should see the amount of piecing in historic bodices, so I try not to feel too bad about it, but once that is sewn on, again turn to the inside and pinned into place, I will again fell it down on the inside, and try and alleviate as many of my tiny little weird mistakes with this top binding um, with stitches as I could, I then finished the arm size in the exact same way, just using more of the mandragora silk bias tape here, and I will pin that right sides together all around the arm side, stitch that all around the arm side, and again turn everything to the inside and hand stitch it down on the inside, hand fell it down on the inside, so finishing the arm size in the exact same way, I'm not going to be setting a sleeve into this at all, today the sleeves on this garment, they're not real sleeves, uh it's just trim in some ways, a fabric, strips of fabric pinned and uh twisted and swathed around the top of the shoulders, and then there's some beaded fringe that makes it look like it's a sleeve, it's not a real sleeve, it's just draped trim, but we'll get to all that later, and that does mean I have no sleeve to set in here, which is why I'm finishing this arm side now, always remember to clip your curves on this sort of thing, especially on an arm side, which is very very curvy, because if you're not going to be setting a sleeve in here, you really need to try and make this as smooth and non-bulky as possible, especially you certainly don't want anything bulky and bunched up underneath your arm, and speaking of arms, you may have noticed that different parts of this video my hand doesn't have a tattoo, and now it does, and sometimes it's still under its band-aid, and eventually at the end of this video it will be fully healed, um and need touch-ups honestly, so yes uh I got this tattoo at the very end of June, and I made this project during the month of July, so at different stages of the process I have different amounts of It's very historically accurate of course to have uh like three-fourths of a sleeve on your left arm, not so much, and of course I have short hair now, so I won't be able to do typical 1890s hair either, though I have watched Nicole Rudolph's video all about short hair in the 1880s and 90s, so technically it was hypothetically possible, so again would I get thrown out of a ball if I showed up as myself? I would because again the tattoos uh long gloves would be necessary, and then also you'll see in the footage next week I went with some uh sateen from Moulin Rouge inspired makeup to wear with this gown, which again is highly uh you know scandalous for the time, uh only only actresses and other professional women would wear makeup I think in the 1890s for the most part, and yes you can see all of my weird bias binding has all felled down, at least it looks it looks nice once it's felled for the most part, even if it is pieced a bit along the neckline, but once everything is bound this bodice is nearly finished, or at least wearable in some ways, so it's completely minimalist at this moment, but I need to go ahead and put my closures in, so I'm going to go ahead and mark every inch and a quarter down the center front of this and put in my hook and eyes, I'll go ahead and sit at my computer, watch QI reruns or something, and stitch all those on, you don't have to suffer through that but I sure did, jumping forward in time to after I've made a bunch of flowers which are getting in the way on the edge of the screen, to figure out how we're going to start trimming this gown, so for the front sort of drape portion that goes across the front of this, I want to find a piece of moiré that's big enough to make that little drape across the front and I'm going to fold that along the 45 degree angle and simply pin it to the side seam, so I just found a largest piece of moiré that was left over and I'm pinning a folded edge, this edge is folded along the 45 degree angle, again bias because fabric is stretchy on the bias even if it's not a stretch fabric, woven fabrics are stretchiest at the bias I guess and that's why you know you've heard of bias cut gowns in the 1930s, a lot of things are made that's not like they're they aren't tight because they have a zipper, they're form-fitting because they're using the stretch of bias to achieve that, so and I will be using the stretch possibilities of bias to do this draping today, so I have this piece pinned to my side seam, here I am in my pajamas, no makeup, hair clip, all that jazz, standing in front of my very dusty mirror here in the sewing room going ahead and draping the front swath of this, I'm just using my hands to form this into the folds and curves that I want across the front of the bodice, just playing with this over my own body, I don't have a dress form that is the same exact size as me, especially not corseted, so the only way to really drape is to drape right on my body and this worked perfectly well to do so, I do end up putting this bodice onto my dress form while I'm trimming this later but the dress form that I have in my sewing room, the adjustable blue dress form, it does not it does not a body double for me in any way shape or form, it's more just like a vaguely person-shaped hanger and I've seen actually people put their corset on a pillow and put the bodice like around a couple of pillows to be able to have it just stand up, like that's what I'm using the dress form for, is just as a way to make the bodice stand up in place so that I can work on it, not necessarily because it fits it in any way shape or form, so when I'm doing the actual draping I'm putting the garment onto my actual body where it will actually end up having to go, so I'm draping all this across the front, pinning it into place, I'm going to put about a thousand pins on this, along the other side I'm marking where that other side seam is, I ended up putting a little strip of green silk up in here as well and a little strip of netting up along the neckline but I'm just draping that all on directly onto my person, onto the bodice, pinning it to the bodice while I'm wearing it basically, but as you can see here we have a proliferation, proliferation of pins and I'm going to go ahead and put some tacking stitches everywhere there are pins, so I'm going to tack all these folds I've made like a pinched into the garment, I'm going to tack all those down, I'm going to tack everything down along this little edge here, I'll cover this edge with trim later and then put hooks and eyes to go ahead and attach this to this edge, of course while I was draping it I was just using pins but in the end uh pins are not completely inaccurate as a way of closing things, more accurate for earlier periods in the 17th and 18th centuries and actually definitely earlier than that um most clothing was closed and affixed with pins but by the end of the Victorian era everything was closed with hooks and eyes and into the Edwardian era I think they were also had snaps as well, I'm not exactly sure when metal snaps first started but I think it was around the turn of the century, but for this I'm going to be using some skirt hooks which they didn't exactly had but they did have big hook and eyes so same idea um and a couple of hook and eyes to affix this to the other side seam and then the side seam where I had first pinned this piece I will go ahead and slip stitch this um so you'll see that in a minute but everything is just getting folded under and tacked down just as I had pinned it and this again is where we start getting into the well it's the inside no one's ever going to see it so you just have your stitches everywhere and again I have a couple of historic garments that I own that I've you know been unable to resist at the antique mall I've worked in museum collections before I've seen inside garments like this the stitching was not precise nowadays if you buy couture if you buy a gown from Dior I'm sure everything is stitched very finely but the early days of couture when everything was couture because everything was handmade and there was no such thing you know when department stores were just starting and you could just barely get a made a pre-made shirt waist and every ball gown ever made had been made to order uh you know sometimes the stitching was done as well as needed not as well as could be possible given you know infinite time and I don't think I used my machine again on this project so it up it is all just hand stitching from now on it's a lot of tacking things down again anywhere I had things pinned within these folds here I'm stitching things down I'm just tacking everything so that it stays how I had it pinned and with stitches as invisible from the outside as possible if I did have to make stitches that would show on the outside either it was right along this side seam so it didn't exactly matter because my arms are going to be kind of in the way you won't you won't be able to analyze my side seams that closely um or it was an area that was going to be covered by more trimming anyhow because I will put a leafy lace trim on here that was the same trim I used on the skirt and on the day bodice as well and I'll be putting lots of black beaded fringe onto this bodice and a couple of little applique butterflies so I really had options as far as covering any stitches that ended up on the outside and I can link in the description below where I picked up both the trimmings for this dress and also this black beaded fringe here I actually bought this beaded fringe for a different project so hopefully I have enough for the other project because I ended up using more of it on this than I thought I was going to but I really love the fringe on this gown I really leaned into the fringe um so I'm really happy with how it came out so I can't regret using it because it is very fun but in general I had hours and hours of tacking all kinds of things down listening to podcasts helping the time go by this is the last of my mandragora colored silk sadly um I don't think I have any more in the stash which is a bummer because it's out of stock and it is the most gorgeous color ever um again I was saying I think in the roses video I mentioned that I was having the hardest time finding a plain silk taffeta that matched this color of green because this is not actually green it's black mauve and yellow threads woven together to create this ribbed silk that is this olive green color has a lovely sheen to it super gorgeous iridescence um black and yellow and silk baron is currently out of stock of this color if it comes back in stock I'll probably grab a little bit more because I just love this color but I was able to find a plain woven silk taffeta in a very similar shade just a little bit brighter but same tone of color um I was able to find that through pure silks so I will link to that other green color of silk that I used for the leaves and other trimmings on this gown as well as linking you over to silk baron where I usually end up picking up my silks and I can link to this black moire over on mood fabrics as well but yes for the outside edge where I initially pinned that piece of bias folded fabric that I used to drape across the front this area it's still pinned here right along the side seam where I had done it originally I'm going to go ahead and invisibly slip stitch all this down so it looks like it's been sewn into the seam and if you were really thinking ahead you could have sewn a piece like this into the seam itself but I find it much easier just construct the whole bodice and then put on all the trimmings and drapings etc afterwards but yes here I am slip stitching that 45 degree fold along the side seam any areas that were particularly egregious on the inside of this uh folding flap I did cover with some rayon seam binding so along this little area here where the top of the bodice is going to hook closed on this side I did go ahead and cover some of the raw edges with a little bit of rayon seam binding and I am just tacking some mandragora green silk down to start draping it over my shoulder strap here and create a little bit of a puff swag bow sleeve thing again not a real sleeve all sleeves are illusion in this garment and you can see the difference in the armscye of me and the armscye of this dress form is vast and therefore very annoying um even to do this much draping on this dress form is a pain in the arse so I'm making it work here but it's not like you have to have a dress form because is this one really helping me hmm debatable mostly I was just kind of draping everything as best I could trying the bodice on seeing what I liked seeing what I didn't didn't like taking it off repinning stuff um and just going back and forth between draping trying it on draping trying it on and through trial and error finding exactly what I wanted and once I had most of the front drape all tacked into place I went ahead and covered the join between the moiré and the green silk along the front here with again that leafy venetian lace style trim and where the clusters of leaves sort of join uh there's points where like three leaves come together at any of those points I went ahead and sewed on a few black glass beads to go ahead and catch the light and look a little bit like berries for the other quote-unquote sleeve I'm going to go ahead and take some more of this netting about oh I think this was maybe eight or ten inches wide just scrunched up and then folded and pinched into little you know swags and drapes folding and twisting it wherever I wanted it again not a real sleeve you can see I was just twisting almost all the way to the back and then I came back forward to create this little puff just creating little puffs and drapes around this drape here needs to be big enough that my arm will fit through it so I'm just leaving a little bit of extra ease I will pin all this into place and again try the dress on see how it's looking move things around but this area here my arm needs to go through it so I'm leaving myself a little bit of extra ease in there and pinning all this into place where I think I might like it and then I will stitch it all down and to finish off my sleeves can you hear the air quotes hopefully you can I'm actually stitching two layers of the beaded trim together here so I have double the weight and also just double the amount of fringe and beads these are very cold against the arm which kind of nice here in summertime but I put a running stitch right atop the beads and then I'm whip stitching the top of this but this little ribbon that the fringe is attached to comes on I guess I will be covering with some more of our leafy trim here luckily I had enough leafy trim to do everything I wanted to I have a tiny bit left over which is nice better than the other way around and having a tiny bit not enough you know and again I use some glass beads as the little berries along this trim again and kept getting my thread caught on the fringe uh this fringe was frustrating to work with but it was just so pretty that was worth it but lots of draping and tacking and draping and tacking and redoing re-draping and re-tacking and then anywhere a stitch would show I would go ahead and sew a sequin or a bead on or something to make it a point of interest as opposed to a point of disappointment perhaps lots of trial and error and actually the designing the free-form kind of playfulness of this is quite fun uh this tacking it down once you've got it how you like that can be kind of irritating but playing with all the fabric and the trim is very fun rather on theme there's actual thunder and lightning happening outside so if you hear thunder in the background that that's not even me adding it at this point it's just actually happening but here's my first sort of go at the back like full go at the back here trying to drape these in almost a sort of layered curtain kind of fashion especially with the fringes as well I ended up refining this and redoing the drape of the back unpinning all of this and trying again because this first version wasn't yet perfect or at least wasn't as pretty as I thought it could be so here's the second version of the drape on the back I'm liking it a little bit more now so I'm starting to tack things down including that leaf trimmed piece of double fringe here I actually used the double fringe on this side and on the other sleeve uh quote-unquote sleeve I just used one layer of fringe so it's a little bit sparser the beads are a little bit more sparse on that side and a little bit thicker on this side just adding to the asymmetry of it all the evening bodice for mandragora is so symmetrical that it was really fun to do something very asymmetric this time and here I'm actually just adding a couple of extra beads onto the fringe so that I can have a few faceted teardrops interspersed in these beads I did a few on the back and then a few here on the front just dripping down from the trim to kind of blend where the trim moves into the fringe the beads that make up the fringe are not a very high quality seed bead they aren't very like they don't have a super high shine to them and they aren't very uniform compared to I don't know like my yuki or seed beads that I'm more used to working with which is totally fine I just incorporated some of the more sparkly beads and a couple of fire polished czech glass teardrop shaped beads into my own little fringes here to help blend everything together I do have a couple of these applique butterflies that I put on here as well we all know I love a little bug moment these were from mary not martha on etsy that's also where I originally bought this leaf trim I don't know if they have it there anymore um you can definitely grab it from different sellers uh Chinese sellers on etsy tend to have this trim in this and probably other colors as well um but the butterflies were from mary not martha so I'll go ahead and link those in the description below with everything else and here you can see one of the skirt hooks that holds my little front drape closed up here and then finally to finish off this bodice for today I'm going to be stitching on three dull purple orchids here silk orchids that I made and I'll be showing you how I made these in another tutorial video soon and thus the bodice is complete after hours and hours of tacking all this embellishment down adding little beads and sequins wherever I needed to adding a couple of little butterflies on here just you know really piling it on luckily with late Victorian well most Victorian eras you can really just pile on the embellishment there is no such thing as too much in this era which is great for a maximalist like me and as I'm speaking to you now actually the skirt and other embellishments I had in mind for this gown are all complete so I'm very excited to show you the finished costume next week but I hope you enjoyed seeing how the bodice came together today and thank you as always for watching and thank you to my patrons for making my work possible and of course I'll be back here with sewing vintage fashion costuming and crafting real soon so I'll see you then bye