One Day Before the Ball --- Trim, Trim, and More Trim....

It's only one day before the Ball, and I still have a bit of trim left to do.  Did I mention that trim takes up a lot of time & effort to do well? It's worth it though.

I have two cockades that I need to make for my shoulders. Luckily, they are easy, but time consuming to make.

A cork board, pins, and a compass are useful when making cockades.

I re-made the 5-pointed looped rosette...

...when combined form a nifty cockade.

A huge goldish button will be placed in the middle of this ribbon cockade when I'm done. Unfortunately, I don't have anything that works, so tomorrow will be a very quick trip to Joann's Fabric Store.

It took about 1.5 hours to make a set of two cockades, which will fit on top of the shoulders of my costume. It took so long because I was trying to make it perfect. Then I remembered my adage....

Perfection is the enemy of the done.

Consequently, I stopped 'futzing' and just finished it.

Also, do you know that cats are super helpful when working on a project? Mine are particularly helpful in supervising my work.

It's a good thing ribbon work takes little room.

I also added the closures to my skirt, which required more hand-sewing, but everything fit perfectly when I tried it on for practice. While I was doing that, my Viking reminded me that I probably want ribbons in my petticoats so I can hike up my skirt in a "fashionably" way. So I grabbed some silk ribbon and added ribbon loops to the inside of my petticoats!

All those little things you forget.....

There was one thing on my costume that I was dreading --- hand-sewing all of the gold trim. This process took about 2 hours to accomplish. The gold braid trim is thick and parts of the bodice have several layers of fabric.

First, I whipped stitched the edge, then followed it with a running stitch on the other side of the braid. After completely half of the bodice -- one hour -- I took a break as my fingers hurt, even with the thimbles...and using pliers to pull the needle through.

I think it gives the bodice a bit of life.

Things done and still left to do:

1. Finalize the front bodice pieces.
2. Sew the front bodice to the rest
3. Add grosgrain ribbon around the neck
4. Sew lining & fabric together
5. Trim, trim, and more trim.
• Make trim
• Add trim
6. Add closures:
• Add closures to bodice
• Add closures to skirt
7. Sew a new waistband onto the skirt. 
8. (Optional) Make Corset. -- Yeah, no way this is getting done.....
   
9. Get buttons for cockade and sew onto shoulders.
10. Sew buttons for skirt loops onto bodice.