I spent all weekend working on my Flanders gown. I completely finished pad stitching all the fur to the linen lining. I cut out the new interlining. I cartridge pleated the kirtle skirt to the bodice. In other words I took my snowed in weekend and really made some magic. I thought I’d be ready to start cutting out the fashion layer and assembling the gown this week!
I was soooooooo wrong.
The fulled wool padding I added to the kirtle skirt to give it a little more body worked overtime! The skirt now stands ~4” out from the bodice. That’s WAY too much. I originally added the padding because the linen I was using for the kirtle lacked the body to give the skirt the fullness that I wanted. The skirt is 180 inches in circumference and in retrospect I might not have needed to add the padding after all. Had I made the skirt only 120 inches in circumference as I had originally considered then I expect I would have needed it. However, when I decided to add in the extra 60 inch panel I probably should have dropped the padding. Now I will need to take the skirt off, remove the padding layer and cartridge pleat it back on again. Ugh!
The worst part though? When I tried on the gown bodice lining with the kirtle the fur split in several places! I’m SO frustrated over this! And I’m not sure what the problem is. The fur I used for the bodice came from a coat whose skins were more delicate than the others so the problems might be with the skins themselves. It’s possible I was too rough taking it on and off but I tried to be pretty careful so if I was too rough then I’m not sure the bodice lining as it is could stand up to regular wear like it needs to. So I might need to rethink the way I’m doing the lining. Whatever the reason is though I’m too frustrated with it right now to deal with it. I’m letting it sit until tomorrow. Hopefully by then I will be less frustrated and can better evaluate the problem and decide on the solution I want to use.
If anyone happens to have any experience with this though please feel free to let me know!
The take away message? Sometimes even when you take your time and work carefully you will still run into problems, setbacks, and frustrations. Life is made of setbacks. The thing that really matter is what you do with them. And sometimes the best thing you can do is to set the project down, distract yourself, and come back to it the next day when you can look at it again with fresh eyes. Personally every time I have tried to power through when I was really frustrated with a project I only made it worse. Sometimes the best thing really is to leave it until tomorrow.
But if you want to see a picture of how awesome the fur lining looked before everything blew up there’s a picture in my gallery. 
My grandmother would be so proud. Even her tissue patterns were in pristine condition. 
