More on the skirt...

After a sick day delay (boo!), I was able to finish up a large part of the skirt.  It's almost too bad a good portion of it will be under swaths of lace--although that will also hide some of the less perfect parts.

Hiding a pocket in the closure--easiest place to do it and it will be covered up anyway.  I made it deep enough to hold my cell phone since I always carry it around at school and never have anywhere good to keep it in the historic outfits.  This is way better than hiding it in my cleavage...

Showing the construction of the bands--there are no visible seems on the original dress, but also no images showing exactly how it was sewn together.  The bands seem to 'float' above the background fabric, so I gave them a bit of extra room to allow for puffiness.  I think this approach would have worked better if I'd used a fabric that could have a crisp edge ironed into it.  This thick upholstery fabric didn't quite comply with my wishes.  The green is sewn to the base layer (muslin) at the top, then the bottom is sewn directly to the smaller ivory band.  The ivory band gets top-stitched to the muslin very close to the green fabric seem (almost stitch-in-the-ditch), with a little extra room for the green to 'puff' and cover over the top-stitching.  The pattern continues, with no visible top-stitching once complete.

Right side of the skirt.  This will be largely covered by lace, fabric, and more fabric.  And some more lace.

Bands ready for decorative fun!  The original seems to have some sort of bows, but there is no photo of the left side of the dress (also where the top closure is hidden).  So without a clear direction, I chose to go off on my own.  No, I have no particular historic garment to justify this particular design.  Just that I am not overly fond of bows, but I do like buttons--sans buttonholes.  I hate making buttonholes.

Insets sewn in and ready to flip right-side-out.  Then a lot of hand-sewing to get all the parts connected without visible stitching.  This part got pretty tedious.

Buttons!  Cloth-covered and debonair.  

Next up are yards and yards of lace to drape artistically.  Followed by about seventeen hundred more tasks after that...until then, more NyQuil and some sleep.