In the last weekend before the Con, I needed to make a sleeve pattern, and make fringe and tassels.

Here was my first attempt to go from the small Victorian sleeve to a big puffy sleeve, using this tutorial:

I went through several versions before I found one where the gathering was actually parallel to the floor, and not angled up. I started out with muslin which was laying way too flat. I switched over to making the mockup in organdy which gave me the poof I wanted, but threw off the line for the gathering and sleeve opening again. I finally got it – it looks super bizarre on the pattern because it’s not at all a straight line there, but it ends up straight when on the arm.

Here are fringe samples:

The top one has two threads doubled over spaced 1″ apart, whereas the bottom one only uses one thread spaced 1/2″ apart. I liked the look of the bottom one better by itself, but nothing about this dress is delicate or subtle, so I ended up going with double strands on the final dress.

All my tassels ready to be attached to the dress:

It took a lot of staring at grainy photos to figure out that on the dress, the tassels are only attached to every other fringe knot, and not every one (woo half as many tassels to make!)

I had to make the fringe and tassels because there was no possible way to color match this with commercial fringe and tassels. I used embroidery thread which is probably a little too lightweight, but it was the only way to get the correct colors.

Next up, the whole costume together!