The best laid schemes of mice and men…

Well my grand plans of finishing Anne and working on all kinds of things over my 3 day weekend went bust.

I started out strong on Thursday night, finishing my underskirt with the exception of a hook and eye at the waist. I also discovered the cause of the problem with my old hoopskirt and fixed it.

(Basically, when I first got that hoopskirt in 2007 to wear under Belle, it had a sharp drop off after the last hoop. Since Belle was only one layer of fabric at that point and I had no petticoat to wear with it, I made ruffles out of leftover satin and attached them to the bottom, to smooth over the drop off. Turns out the weight of those ruffles is what has been pulling the hoops out of shape. I took them all off and the hoops pretty much sprang back to life and the hoops now weigh MUCH MUCH less which is nice.)

Here’s the whole gang hard at work that night:

Hammering out a hem.  Tom's too fabulous to work.Kelldar.com | My Facebook Page | Tumblr | Instagram

And a couple of awkward shots of everything pinned back together:

Underskirt is finished.Kelldar.com | My Facebook Page | Tumblr | Instagram Photo & Video Sharing by SmugMug

Friday Chase cut out the front piece for my bodice – but I never got to working on it. I cleaned up my office and started tackling the sleeves. I realized that the sleeve pattern in my Tudor pattern wasn’t going to work, so I came up with something else. I ended up with sleeves that had 16 slashes in them each, each slash needing facing, and then beading with pearls.

Working on the slashes on Sleeve 1:

Starting the outer sleeves. These things were a pain in the BUTT. I can't remember how many slashes there were on each sleeve but each one had to be faced. It took forever.Kelldar.com | My Facebook Page | Tumblr | Instagram

Beading Sleeve 1:

Sewing on the pearls. These ended up being too heavy and bulky and I was not happy with them. A whole days' worth of work had to be removed, and I bought some pearl trim online, which was much lighter and worked better.Kelldar.com | My Facebook Page | Tumblr | Instagram

I think my pearls are a LITTLE big (and heavy) but I’m going with it.

I spent all night Sat night beading and most of the day Sunday. Just one stupid sleeve.

But, here it is last night:

Original sleeve with the heavier pearls. You can see how much they are weighting the sleeve down.Kelldar.com | My Facebook Page | Tumblr | Instagram

Still waiting on my fabric for the interior sleeve, and I need to finish the interior edges of the sleeve and obviously sew it up, but the bulk of the work is done on it. Some of the pearls need a little tightening up too which i’ll do when I’m finishing the inside.

Then… onto Sleeve 2 BLEGH

Working on the slashes for the second sleeve.The top sleeve is totally beaded with pearls I had on hand. They ended up being far too heavy and bulky. I ended up taking them all off and replacing them with a much lighter pearl trim I found online.While it was the right decision, it wasted several days' worth of work and was very frustrating.Kelldar.com | My Facebook Page | Tumblr | Instagram

(the pink underneath is just an old dry-erase board I’m using as a table)

Honestly, I’m really tempted to just go buy a pearl trim and replace what I’ve got with it – but that would mean I wasted about 10 hours of beading this weekend. Uuuugh I don’t know what to dooooo but the trim would look better… may stop by hancocks and see what they have on the way home… boo.

And in non-Anne news, I got the eyelets for my Peggy belt buckle, a shirt for Peggy at goodwill that will look nice with some altering, and shoes for Donna. Yay.