I leave for Jordan Con in 5 days, and my dress still doesn’t have sleeves or trim. So, I’m too busy sewing to actually to a proper post (the 2 weeks of travelling in March did not help). So here is a super quick photo montage of what I’ve been up to, no quips or gifs to distract.

The skirt has 8 rows of ruffles. Tracing these onto paper was beyond laborious. To get it on the skirt, I taped both to the window while it was sunny out to trace it out. Like a giant lightbox!

HA HA I thought cutting silk charmeuse had been bad, I take it back. Nothing is worse than cutting silk chiffon into ruffles. It looks like a straight line, but I promise it isn’t. That might have up to an inch or so of waviness. I used a piece of cardboard cut to the right length and a rotary cutter.

A cupcake ariseth from the deep! Each ruffle got roll hemmed by machine, gathered over a cord, then attached to the skirt. The bottom two ruffles too about 3 hours each to attach. Yikes. Luckily the ruffles got shorter as I went up the skirt, but the top ones were still around 45 minutes each.

Feeling discouraged about how long the ruffles had taken, and wondering if I should have gone with organza instead of chiffon, or made the ruffles 3x length instead of 2x. Then I put the skirt on and OMG IT LOOKED AMAZING!

I also basted a zipper on the top to see if it fit, and popped it on with the skirt. THIS COSTUME IS GOING TO LOOK SO GOOD! It is also too wide to fit through doors, or to fit in the mirror for a selfie.

This is my first time ever sewing an invisible zipper. To my great astonishment, it was incredibly easy to do, and looks really good. I will definitely be using more invisible zippers in my (modern) sewing future.

This weekend – make a sleeve pattern, and make sleeves. That leaves me Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday to hand-knot sleeve fringe, make sleeve tassels, put on the waistband covering the join, and sew on the buttons. Luckily, all of that is handwork, and can be done at the plane and even at the Con, so I should be done by Saturday afternoon when the contest is!

As a reward for getting through this, here are my photo albums from the Fashion Museum in Bath, the Museum of London, and the V&A. Part of that 2 weeks of traveling was in London, so I really don’t begrudge that 🙂