Sleeves Finally!

After my complete fail and frustration with my PT dress sleeves I spent a good while searching for 18th century sleeve patterns and any kind of visual that could help me make a better sleeve. I couldn't find anything that would help me draft a sleeve to fit my specific dress, which was my original plan to fix the sleeve, but I found a pattern that worked!


Using the sleeve pattern from this page, I was finally able to get some good sleeves! I actually just enlarged it on my computer screen till I thought it was at a large enough size then traced it bit by bit onto paper. I had to make it a little bit larger and a little bit longer after the first try but that was simple enough.

I lost my original scaled up pattern from the costume closeup jacket and tried to do that general shape after draping it and things are in the wrong place and it's just a mess! I do love that seam at the elbow though, I just couldn't get it right!

and finally the pattern that worked!! Yay!! 

Here are the finished sleeves!! Which makes this dress officially finished! I'd like to add trim but I'm going to move onto other projects before I come back and trim this. 

Hopefully I'll get some full outfit pictures of it up by tomorrow! 

The P.T. Dress Hit's a Roadblock

If there's anything that sets me back in historical costuming, it's the issues that come with patterns and sizing up etc etc.  Math is not my strong point!

I spent the weekend working on the Patience Tabitha dress and finished just about everything except the hem and the sleeves. I even got the matching petticoat done.

The finished and unusable sleeve

I very stupidly took the pattern from my costume closeup jacket (and even that pattern needs to be altered to fit me better!) and used it's sleeve's pattern. Of course I cut out both sleeves, floral fabric and lining, and sewed up a whole sleeve before discovering it didn't fit my dress. I did try to make it fit... but that resulted in weird bunching and messed up neckline.  To be fair, I think some of the issues are possibly from draping it. I think I cut the armholes larger than they should be, which I need to remember to fix on my basic 18th century pattern I made. 

I now need to go back and make a new sleeve pattern that actually fits but I think I may take a day or two and step back from this dress and work on some other projects.