Update

So I've been pretty busy...but not much done on my challenge dress. I got to a little standstill, being in the middle of moving and having lost the pattern for the trim for the shoulder.  So I have one sleeve fnished and tied onto the dress. The other sleeve is cut out, and the wrist trim is finished...but I have yet to find the trim pattern and I am not feeling brave enough yet to just re draw it.

I also have my skirt pleated and sewn to the bodice. It has yet to be hemmed. I'm hoping one of my mum will be able to help me this week with pinning where the hem needs to be. I also decided to cheat with my girdle....I put a row of beads along the bottom edge of the bodice. The beads stop at the front openings though leaving about a three inch gap, and if I want to do anything dangly in the front or to hang my fan off of I have yet to figure out how I want to do that.

I have also been working on the doublet for one of the groomsmen. Its a lovely wine/burgundy brocade. I'm doing a fine line of slashing along the edges of the tabs on the skirt, center front, and collar. The collar and tabs and armscyes are all edged in a slashed piping. There aren't going to be sleeves, as we are planning a velvet overcoat with a wide fur collar and are so short on time (only three and a half months until the wedding and still so much to sew!!) I need to handstitch the lining to the armholes, finishe slashing the piping and do the button holes. I hope to be able to do most of that on the ride back to Cody today.

I have also been working on one of my bridesmaids dresses.  Its based of off the 'Bella Nani' by Paolo Caliari.  I ordered five yards of the medium blue velveteen from Renaissance Fabrics (my favorite online fabric store) and one yard of vintage bobbin lace off ebay from France for those fancy cuffs. I've spent the last few days working on the cutwork for the sleeve. I first drew up the pattern and then traced it onto wonder under...so on and so forth. I did not handsew around all the edges though. I cheated and done it by machine. Shame on me. But the pile of the velveteen more or less hides the stitching so it doesn't look too bad. I also worked on the partlet to go with the dress, using some white cotton voile. It is a gathered/ pleated type partlet. I don't have a specific portrait I based that off of, but it looks pretty good, just got to sew a line of silk ribbon over all the rows of gathering and itll be finsihed.  I hope to kidnap Emily for a while sometime this week so I can work on fitting her bodice.

Anyway I hope to take pictures once I get to Cody and hopefully I'll get around to posting them soon.