Mother-of-the-Bride Dress

So this week's goal was to finish my mum's dress for the wedding. Quick and simple. We did it together, using fabrics of her choice and loosely patterning it off of early-mid 1500's Florentine with the very stiff front bodice and simple trim. I made her an ankle lace camicia out of muslin, and practiced my newly learned hobby of making Armenian needle lace on the front of the neckline and on the cuffs. I should've caught pictures of that, but it slipped my mind. We then made the sotanna out of a dark strawberry red poly/nylon taffeta we got on sale at Hancock's. The bodice is stiffened with several layers of canvas. For the sake of modesty, my mother wanted the neckline higher than I would normally have made it to get the right silhouette...this messed me up with drafting the armscyes and so there's some funny wrinkling on the bodice due to it. There is side back lacings through tiny machine made button holes (I wasn't thrilled with the idea of hand binding eyelets through the tight synthetic fabric). And for ease...the sleeves are sewn on to the shoulders where they should be tied or buttoned on.

I used a modern jacket pattern that my mum had previously used for herself and revamped it, taking out the darts and adding some curves and used that for the doublet pattern. It is made from some pretty flocked taffetta, lined with black cotton and interlined with a layer of cotton/poly quilt batting. I found some buttons with velvet centers at Uprising that went perfect, they are sewn to the front edge...and I cheated here again...the doublet closes with hook and eyes strategically placed under the buttons.

And thanks to Hastings for giving me the link to a picture showing an external pocket/pouch type thing. I tried it out for my mum out of the flocked taffeta and it turned out really nice except that I made the ties around the waist too short and so the pocket barely clears the bottom edge of the doublet. But she is happy with it there and so I'll leave them that length and make them longer for the pouch I want to make for myself. I also made her a simple partlet out of muslin and am letting her borrow my black crocheted hairnet that she made for me a while back.

All in all I think it worked out really well and we made good time. That's one set of garb crossed off the list of the thirteen I'm planning to do for the wedding.