These Things are So Effing Small...and Only Getting Smaller

As I mentioned last time, I have a big hand-crafting project to finish on a deadline. The 22nd Annual Mid-Winter Civil War Grand Ball is coming up and my sister C-2 would very much like to go. I have gone in the past in not appropriate attire and it was very awkward. I decided I no longer wanted to look inappropriate so my DDM and I set about working on a period-appropriate ballgown.

This one, with the lace on the collar and sleeves. 

In Felicity-ballgown-blue polyester silk and trimmed with black lace with beads. 

I got together with Mom to continue working on the gown. I put on the corset, stunned to find it still fit after a solid year, and put on the skirt and bodice, which had seemed a mess of issues last year. The skirt was still messily too long and needs to be hemmed, which will be a bit complicated as Mom is turning out to be a big perfectionist about this. We decided to try for a little bit of trim along the bottom edge as well. Then we turned our attention to the bodice. It still didn't seem to be fitting right. I stood still as Mom examined it. Suddenly her face cleared a bit, she reached out to the edges of it, gave it a firm yank down around my waist, and everything magically fell into place, right where the sleeves and collar and waist were supposed to lie. Jeez.
So we aren't as far behind as expected. Good. Great.
My next step became clear. I needed to start working on the closures for the bodice. To be accurate, the historical closings are corset-like lacings through hand-stitched eyelets. We would have just cut corners and done modern grommet placements, but our local store did not have black grommets. So I get to do this by hand, like they did in the 1850's. Great. Fifteen eyelets on each side, 3/4 inch apart, 3/16 inch around. Thirty total.
Thank God I have two more weeks, these are going to take gorram forever.

My first two.

Clearly I learned a few things between the first, down by the bottom edge, and the second. These two took me a solid hour and a half all by themselves. Making sure they're big enough for the specs is difficult; they're supposed to be 3/16" around, or 4.75-ish mm. That feels huge, but it's really not. My tools for making the holes were actually too small to start with.

My workstation (the keyboard of my laptop) is kind of a mess right now, anyway.

My scaling tools. 

The smallest needle is what I've been using to part the threads of the silk, rather than punching through it. Then I go in with the metal and plastic yarn needles to make the hole larger, and finally go through with the wooden knitting needle to get the final gauge. It feels a lot like stretching ear lobe piercings, not going to lie.

Either way, these two are actually still smaller than they're supposed to be. I don't know how I keep shrinking them! Ah well. I'll just use the yarn needle to help pull the lacing ribbon through when I go to put the sucker on. 

But remember how I said these eyelets are small?

That's the whole edge of the bodice on my lap.

Can you see where I was working? Two down...twenty-eight to go. Whoo boy. 

(I should be grateful though, in the end. Chelsea over at "A Sartorial Statement" came in at sixty-six eyelets for her 18th century maternity stays. Yikes!)

A Finished Thing!

I finished another thing!
Remember I was knitting for Friend M's Baby O a while back?

That was this one, oh so long ago now.

It's the Wee Stripes Pullover, and I liked the color way and pattern enough to start a second, exactly the same version just a size up for Friend A's Baby M who was born in December. Last time we saw it, it looked like this:

Very sad.

Well...

It is in fact completed!

This one turned out just a little wonky; the tension at the bottom being a little tighter than the rest of it, and the seaming up being a little sloppy because I was in a hurry.

Button band and all.

I found these nice gray wooden buttons for both Baby O's and Baby M's sweaters, so they're super matchy-matchy. 

Look who came to visit!

I put the sweater on Tammo's level to take pictures of, making it part of his domain and so needing a thorough inspection. We also saw the new movie Peter Rabbit this weekend and so I thought a bunny photo would be appropriate. 

This was good timing, as I had another big hand-crafting project to finish on a timeline, so getting this sweater out from under me was a large weight off.