I'm nearly there with the cording - I've got the two halves of the corset sewn together and all the gores in (7 of the 8 gores in place in these pictures). I have a few row left to do on the right back edge, but the end is in sight!

To insert the gores, I first mark the cutting line on the back on the coutille in pencil. I add a half inch on each side at the edge and a quarte inch each side at the point, then joni the dots to mark a wedge shape around the cutting line. I then machine stitch this in a small length, before cutting along the line to just before the end, where I snip into the corners to for a triangle. Press the cut pieces under and position the gore underneath. I keep a half inch seam allowance from the edge of the gore as far as possibe, forcing the straight edge to for a curve. Once its all pinned, I top stitch all the way around as close as I can to the edge. I found the gores were quite a lot longer than the cuts made to recieve them, so I trmmed them once they were in place.

I'm really pleased with the way it looks, and even more please to report that it fits! I was getting more and more nervous every time I held it up against myself, but I got to the point where I could tack on the shoulder  straps, put the grommets in and lace it up to check. So please - lacing it comfortably tight I get a 2" gap down the back, and the wrinkles from the cording disappear. The shape is quite straight on the waist , but I think thats probably how its meant to be! The straight busk at the front (more on that next time) pulls it in between my breasts and gives a nice shape.

I decided to use non-peiod correct metal grommets for the lacing, as I wanted the strength without the hours of hand stitching through coutille! I've bought some white enamel paint to paint them to match, and will probably cover them in buttonhole stitch some day when I feel like stitching in fromt of the TV.

Pictures of me wearing it next time (when I have something on underneath to protect my modesty!)

I posted about the puckering problem on a couple of forums, and I think the problem is mainly due to my choice of fabrics. For authnticity, I would have needed to use linen, which has a lot more stretch than coutil, and this stretch allow room for the cording. Alternatively, I could have sandwhiched the cord between two layers of coutil, and then had the 'fashion fabric' over the top - apparently for corded corsets a heavy mateial combined with a light material is a biig no-no.
So, I decided to press on with the cording and see what happened. Inserting the gores seems to have eased the problem of the puckering at the bottom of the underarm cording. When I stretch the corset it dissapears completely  - I think I'm going to get away with it! :) The big question now is whether it will fit well enough to put the fabric under enough tension to pull it straight.
I also made the button tabs for the center front. They are a single layer of coutil sandwhiched between two layers of saitn, and I love them already! I've stitched buttonholes but don't plan on cutting them, instead iI will stitch the buttons on through both the tab and the corset, but I wanted to have the buttonholes there to peak out under the buttons. I don't have suitable buttons yet, the ones on the original are fabric covered and very flat, possibly just a metal ring with fabric stretched over? I will have to experiment to find the right technique.
The cording, by the way, is starting to drive me nuts. mostly because my threading tool is shorter than the longest channels, I will have to do something about this before I tackle the other side! But on the plus side, I'm clearly still in love with this design, because I keep coming back to it when I planned to start work on something else!

Updating as promised! This week, I turned the biro marked muslin into a pattern, tracing the lines onto wrapping paper and measuring to ensure that the spacing was regular where it should be. I also mad a guide piece for the front section, so that i could pin it in place and stitch along the folded/cut edges where needed.
I got one front piece corded, the longer peices were a bit of a struggle! Where all else failed, I poked holes in the coutil and pulled the cord to the outside, then started again through the same hole. This worked reasonably well, but you have to be careful not to get and kinks or twists in the cord or it won't go back through.
There seems to be a bit of uneven-ness between the cording and the seams, where the cording has shrunk some sections (I hope - otherwise its because I stitched uneven seams). I'm hoping that once I add the bust and hip gores the tension will be released.

I figure I also better update you on dress progress, actually done last week but it got missed in that huge batch of updates! I started by pinning the fabric to the front of the bodice to figure out the placing of the pleats. I then took the bodice seams apart and sewed it together again with the overlay in place, including  flat pieces at the back.
I added a sleeve, unfortunately I cut the armband way too small so I couldn't actually get it on! I will fix this, and may need to make the armholes a little wider too since it had all that extra fabric gathered in!
Anyway, with the sleeve inI can drape the pattern for the petal like sections which go over the sleeves in the original.

As a foundation for my 2011 Holy grail project (whats that you say? Its 2012 already? well, um.... actually, once I realised I would be getting married in 2011 this became a pretty low priority, so its now a 2011-2012 project) I need an 1830's style corset. This is somewhere between regency and victorian, the corset is full length but is still more about lift and separate and general smoothing rather than cinching in the waist.
The pattern I have is by past patterns http://www.pastpatterns.com/001.html. However, I'm also in love with the 1830s corset shown in Jill Salens book on corsets, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsets-Historic-Techniques-Jill-Salen/dp/1906388016 which has a really cool front fastening with buttons and tabs on alternating sides. The plan is to use the pattern as a base, but following the cording pattern from the book. I may also reposition the side seam, although the hip gores seem to be in different positions in the book and the pattern so I'm not sure how that will work.

I was concerned about how long it was going to take to do the cording if I sewed channels then threaded the cord through, so I attempted to sew channels with the cord in place. My front layer is satin (dull side out) and the back layer is coutil. I used my zipper foot to sew s close to the cord as possible with the cord pressed up agaist the previous line of stitching. Unfortunately this method caused diagonal wrinkles across the cords. I actually quite like this wrinkled effect, but its not uniform enough to be able to use. I also like that I can cut the coutil to shape, attach a larger piece of satin and  then trim the satin to match. The coutil piece doesn't seem to shrink in the process. If anyone has a tip for cording in this way I'd be interested to hear for future projects.
For my second attempt at cording, I sewed the channels and then threaded the cording through -MUCH better :) To stitch the channels, I set the needle position to 4.5 on my bernina and kept the edge of the standard foot level with the previous line of stitchin. My cording is a doubled length of tesco value string, and as a threading tool I'm using a piece of millinary wire with a loop twited in.
I traced the pattern pieces for the gores and marked angles and positions for the cording, following the pattern from the book. Stitching and cording these pieces took much less time than I expected, so I'm feeling pretty good about using this me

At this stage I decided I actually better make a fitting muslin - If I'd carried on and corded the two main pieces and the corset hedn't fit, I'd have been pretty fed up! Fortunately, it fit really well! I forgot to leave a seam allowance at the front so that looks funny, as does the lack of a busk down the front, which I assume will pull the front in between my breats. Anyway, its certainly close enough that I can continue and make any small fitting adjustments with the cording in place.
By the way, I put one of the front hip gores on the wrong side, so then put the other in back to front so that the cording would slope down towards the front as it should.

The final step was to mark on the muslim where the cording should go. I also had several attenpts at drawing a new side seam, still not sure about this one! I will transfer the markings to paper, and then think very carefully about which order to sew the sections in - I'd like to be cording open channels as far as possible, rather than having to poke through the fabric to get to something which is sewn shut across one end.
And thats all for today!

Due to catching a cold right after christmas, I've hardly done any sewing in my holidays :( But I have made a little progress on the ballgown.
I cut out the skirt as a single strip of fabric, and then cut a second narrower strip for the section below the lace. Using the selvedge as the bottom, I pinned the two strips together with bottoms even and then pinned the lace on top. I cut and folded the top of the flounce into scallops and hand stitched the lace on to finish it.
I'm pretty pleased with the results - the subtle difference between one layer of fabric and two layers is just what I was hoping for.
The underskirt is yet to be hemmed, this will be done with a very wide hem to make it the same length as the overlay, then any adjustments to the length will be done from the top when attaching it to the dress.
I also cut out the sleeve pieces - two layers of net, fabric and the overlay - but haven't started assembling them yet.

And last post for today, I've made some progress on my 1830's ballgown.
1. An appropriately shaped hoop skirt, using the Laughing Moon hoop skirt pattern. Went together nice and easy, but definatly needs a petticoat over the top to stop the wires showing through the skirt.
2. Started playing with the bodice overlay - I don't like it so far but I'm not really sure whats wrong, so I think I'll take it all off and do something else and see if my subconscious can sort it out.
Next steps:
1. Make a petticoat floor the new hoop (remembering to check on the appropriate length for 1830's)
2. Cut out sleeve pieces and make up, since I think they'll affect the balance of the dress a lot.
3. Start making up the overskirt, planning to level from the top so that things can be hemmed (or possibly use the selvedge of the fabric) before assembly.
And that's the end of this very numerical post!

I've started work on planning the embroidery design for this dress. The first step was to draw out the design for the skirt, using a grid drawn over the original to scale correctly. The circular heads of the thistles are made using puffs of fabric, the leaves and petals are done with cord 'couched' (stitched over) to the fabric.
Once I'd drawn the design, I made two copies - one a direct tracing, the other a mirror image. The plan is to machine stitch through the paper onto the skirt interlining fabric (unbleached cotton, sold as curtain lining) then tear the paper away. There are two reasons for doing it this way rather than drawing it on - the first is that this will provide a line which I can follow with my fingers when working from the right side of the fabric, the second is that I'm stitching it using 50 yard spools of thread - which means when I'm done I'll know to the nearest 50 yards how much cord I need to buy.
The third picture is some material samples - specifically chinese satin, acetate satin and duchess satin. The chord is size one and size two from the sample card I received, and I plan to make up samples of embroidered designs and gathered strips to see which fabrics work best for the design of the dress and to support the design.This also give me a change to try out different stitches for attaching the cord, the biggest decision being whether to stitch over the cord or through the cord.

Having got as far as I can with Johns coat, I've decided to go back to start work on this dress.
The fabrics I picked up a while ago - I decided to go for a dark pink rather than the peach of the original, mainly because I liked the sheer fabric - it has a little shine but not too much. I chose cream lace to go with it - the lace has to be strategically cut to allow it to drape into those scallop shapes, and I plan to do some sort of reconstruction to create long dangly bits similar to the original. But it was affordable which is the main thing! I also have a plain habatae silk fabric to make bias binding for the sleeves, the belt and any other bits that need to be solid rather than transparent. The lining fabric is a curtain fabric which has a slight slub effect reminiscent of dupion, but again was a budget option.

Actual sewing progress so far: I have cut out and flat lined the underbodice, sewn it together and adjusted it to fit - which involved taking about 2 inches off at the center front and 2 inches off the top of the shoulder. I have a feeling this may bring the neckline up higher than is intended, but the bust darts seemed to be better place with the whole thing pulled up higher, and it makes it easier to adapt to be modest which is always good! I think part of the reason for the adjustments may be that I've lost a little weight since I measure, the proportions seemed good just overall too large.
I realised when I tried it on that I cut out the pointed front version rather than the straight front - I must really have cold brain to have not realised that while I was sewing it up! The solution for now is a pencil line drawn on the fabric to mark where the waist will be. Looking at the pictures again I noticed that the original dress doesn't have a lining - I was planning to make the overlay and underlay as one for skirt and sleeves, and will probably anchor my bodice overlay to the underbodice as well. I assume that the reason they were originally separate was for ease of cleaning, and at the moment can't think of a good reason to not put them together.

So, an update on some of the preparation I've done for my Holy Grail project. After looking around the web, I've discovered theres not a huge amount of information on the 1830's or a lot of choice of patterns. The one I've chosen as coming closest to my inspiration dress is this one by Truly Victorian.
The other thing I've done is track down a supplier for rat-tail cord for the decorative work. They have a big selection of colours, but nothing close to the colour I was hoping to match, so I'm back to the start on picking a colour.
This is what they've got

I guess I need to see which colours I can match in fabric, and do a bit of research to see if there's any perticular rules about colours for the 1830's!
So because I haven't choosen colours or fabrics for the big project yet, and because I want a victorian evening outfit, I've decided to test the TV pattern on this dress- more on that next time!