Corrected Body Block--sort of

I sewed up a test for the body block I had drafted, and did need to adjust the bust darts fairly significantly (which I had expected).  I was pretty excited that all of the measurements we took worked well--only the derived generic measurements were a problem (i.e. the bust darts).

However, instead of just fixing the body block and trying a final version, I decided to make everything a whole lot more complicated for myself.  Surely, if the body block is correct, I can make something worth keeping.  If I make something I actually want to keep, I might as well go all out and make a full dress, right?  I didn't want to spend any money (per the norm), so I used all recycled materials I happened to have lying around, starting with our old duvet cover that had some stains and holes from the washing machine/dryer.  It was striped, so I thought I would add even more layers of difficulty by making the design more interesting with alternating sections in different directions.  Then I decided that the robe a la polonaise just wouldn't look right without some 18th century stays.  Which I also didn't have.

So after a side-track into making some jerry-rigged stays out of two old army coats and coat hangers (gasp, I know! Remember, I wanted to do all this for free, right?), I also had to change the measurements to the new stay-based dimensions.  Yeah, you're right, this is the worst possible way to check a body block.  But now I have a lovely, not really historically accurate dress I can pass off as Martha Custis Washington.  So it all worked out fine!

Hanging loosely on the dress form--I can't close the dress on the form since she's too stiff to put the stays on to get the right measurements.

I went back and forth between really proud of myself for how much more I know now and how well I was able to draft and create a workable pattern, and disappointed that I couldn't get everything quite perfect.  I still can't seem to figure out how to set a Colonial style sleeve.  I just defaulted to the set-in sleeve that I already know how to do--I didn't seem to have given myself enough fabric to work with and didn't want to start all over again on the sleeves.