Sunday, December 3, 2017

Dressing a lady

Lady Jane has consented to being laced into her fancy dress so she can take a walk in her garden!

I’m excited that the Lady’s dress is now complete, even though I’m not 100% happy with it.  The little direction-adjustment jogs in the chain stitch outline caused waves/ripples in the detached buttonhole filling.  Also, I used a slightly different shade of floss for the taupe in the skirt than in the bodice and sleeves – wanted the color change to be more subtle, but it had the exact opposite effect (phooey).  Don’t think I’ll be ripping it out to change that. I’ve had enough of detached buttonhole -  I’d rather do trellis!

I’d love to be able to see and feel the weight of the threads Jane used when stitching her sampler and to compare them to my materials.  Looking at the best photos I have of the original sampler (and also a closeup of the Lady from one of the “sister” samplers, which is much clearer), Jane stitched many more rows of detached buttonhole to fill the dress sections than I was able to fit into the spaces - so I have to think her threads were much finer.

So what’s this odd little thing?  My first effort at filling the right hand side of the skirt pulled and puckered the ground fabric and had to be clipped out – bleah!


Lady Jane in her finery:


The remainder of this band is pretty straightforward stuff and should go quickly so I’m hoping to get it finished this month, even though it *is* December.  Crossing my fingers….

In case you ever wonder about the “splinters” part of the blog name, I’m really good at catching them when we’re working on a household project.  The current one is a coat cabinet in the mud room – didn’t even feel this until later when I was working on Jane and wondering why stitching was making my finger hurt.


Here’s the cabinet-in-progress.


Hope you’ve been having a great weekend – thanks for stopping by!


>^..^<

11 comments:

  1. Lady Jane looks might fine...you did a great job with all the fill in...looks beautiful!!! Hope your finger doen't hurt too much!

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  2. She is absolutely lovely! I wouldn't change a thing.

    So sorry about the splinter . . .hope your finger heals soon.

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  3. She's fabulous! I love the texture/stitches of her dress and the flowers. Great paper in what doesn't look like a mudroom, super nice!

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  4. I think Jane's dress looks awesome!
    That's a lot of filling in, and it looks great.
    Can't wait to see the whole piece.
    Marilyn

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  5. Jane's dress is amazing, I would never have said there were any issues with it, it just looks beautiful.
    Sorry about the splinter, I'm always having to pull them out of my husband's fingers. He has his own personal tweezers as I got cross with him using my expensive ones LOL

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  6. Oh Jane is so lovely!!! Just gorgeous! As for the splinters -- ouch! I hate splinters!

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  7. Amazing stitcing work on Jane´s dress, a beautiful piece.

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  8. Oh wow, Lady Jane looks wonderful! I love the colours.
    Ouch for the splinters, but the cabinet looks great!

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  9. What a fabulous looking dress you've created for Jane, Deb! Really loved seeing the various stitches in those colors. And your coat cabinet looks wonderful--that is a fancy looking mudroom you have there :)

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  10. Lady Jane is looking amazing! I'm loving watching this project grow.

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  11. Could she have used filament silk? That stuff is seriously fine.

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