Yesterday I had a tiny change of plans....

Which turned into a distraction that kept me up all night working on the new divergence.  Bettina's version of the dress points out that the lacing on the collarbone is actually attached to a separate collar piece on the dress.  Several of the Housebook images show women from behind where the collar is clearly made from more elaborate fabric.  I know it wouldn't require a lot of fancy fabric to make a collar, but I don't happen to have any pretty brocade fabric right now.  So instead I decided to cut the collar out of the same wool fabric as the dress, like Bettina did, but I wanted to embellish mine with beading, like the delicious dresses of the Babenberger family tree.  After 8 hours of work, ending just after 5AM, I ended with:

The color of the teal is way prettier in real life, but so far I've had an impossible time getting it to photograph  properly.

I believe the chips are amethyst and both they and the pearls were largess I received for A&S competitions in 2010.  The silver seed beads have been in my stash for ages.  I'm a little worried the spaces between the pearls might be too empty, but I think it will look better once I have the seam allowances turned under.  The beaded band is only an inch wide.

On other fronts, I've been running against a wall all day on the stupid sleeve pattern.  I keep thinking I'm so close, only to have it need tweaks here and there and not fit at all!  It's gone from too small around my fat upperarms to too big and back again!  The angles of everything are mostly working, but I'm having a harder time doing the Moy bog/Grand Asiette style sleeve than a normal fitted sleeve.

And on top of the trouble with patterning the sleeve, the linen I'm lining the bodice with is stretching out of all understanding.  So now I'm all angsty, and nothing seems to be getting accomplished today.  Hopefully working till like three am tonight will help get something accomplished.  I'm running out of time, I have to have this dress done by NEXT WEDNESDAY, and I'm STILL patterning!  ARGH!