Wrinkled... but I took pictures anyway.

Here's the pictures of the bodice with trim. There are four rows that come up in the square, and then three that run paralell to that and up and over the shoulder and down to the center bottom of the back. I spaced everything about 3/8 in apart except where the shoulder straps widen and I spread the trim to kinda cover more area. I think it looks better that way. I couldn't decide whether or not to also sew the ribbon across the back of the neckline and then kinda forgot about it in the excitement of getting the rest of it all sewn on the bodice. I might add some later. If anything, I feel that I made the center trim too 'square' in the front and didn't taper it enough to the middle.

I've worked on the sleeves too. The first thing I did was the wrist tabs. I don't want to put a button or opening at the wrists cause I am too lazy to try and find two buttons that might match the dress, so I took my wrist measurement and rounded it up to 8 inches - which still fits over my fist so I can still easily slip it on. I had determined that I would make all the tabs one inch wide, and then the vertical trim on the lower sleeves would be spaced one inch at the bottom and tapered evenly upwards to best give the appearance of the trim in the portrait. The tabs are made from 3 inch squares of the linen sewed into tubes with a half inch seam, turned inside out, pressed, trimmed along both edges and then folded in half. I basted eight together for each wrist. The finished string of tabs turned out to be a bit more then 8 inches (grr) but I think I should be able to ease them into the wrist opening without too much difficulty.

The rest of thw sleeves will be composed of three parts, the lower sleeve, the upper sleeve and the lining. To get the proportions for the upper part of the sleeve, I took what would have been the upper part of my regular sleeve pattern and roughly multiplied all its outside measurements by two. In the portrait it is difficult to determine if there are more rows of  trim on the upper sleeve than there are on the lower sleeve. In order to make it easy on myself I decided to make it the same number. As I mentioned before, on the lower sleeve, the trim starts off at the wrist being spaced one inch apart and tapered upward. I took the resulting spacing measurement at the top of the lower sleeve and also multiplied that by two to get the spacing measurement for the trim on the upper sleeve. Once I'm ready to gather the two parts together, matching up the trim should be pretty easy and result in a fairly even gather...I hope.

I have the trim sewn on to the first lower sleeve and about a quarter of the way done sewing it to the first baragoni. So far I've done it all by hand and haven't broke down and used the machine. I'd be pretty tickled if I don't get too impatient and could finish the entire thing by hand, but looking ahead to the skirt......that seems doubtful.