Because I'm a responsible student, I've spent most of the last couple of weeks working on studying and projects and preparing for finals. This is good, except it also means that my time for working on the Red Dress Project has been limited. Had my pattern cooperated from day 1, I might have been okay, but alas, it has been giving me fits, and at this point, to finish the dress in time for Yule, I would literally have to work all day and night, Lori and I both, and probably rush some things I'd rather not rush. So, instead of doing that, I'm merely getting Lori to help me with the pattern, and wearing my red hat with a different dress on saturday. Eventually, I will finish the dress (soonish I hope, actually) and hopefully our hats can be reunited at an An Tir event, but for now? My sanity and qualiy time with my BFF are waaay more important. Also, not spending today slaving away on a dress means I actually have time to cook my A&S entry--w00t!
In other news, even though it's been giving me fits, I still love and adore the Herjolfsnes method of making a gown. The basic idea is that the center front and center back panels of a dress are more or less straight cut, with little to no flare or shaping, and that all of the shaping is achieved by a series of gores. Some of these are the normal (to me) triangles that are inserted at the waist, but the Herjolsnes gowns also include a number (4-8, depending on the specific garment) of elongated gores that extend all the way into the armpit, forming the sides of the dress and the bottom of the armsceye. My major issue came with the fact that I am much, much squishier than most women (hooray plus-sized!), and keeping 4 very narrow panels all on grain while trying to fit myself was seeming kind of impossible. Insert the clue-by-four, and I went back and examined the research (http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/cloth/herjback.html) and found that, contrary to what I'd been told, the rule that women's gowns always had four side gores and men's always had two is just totally fallacious. Specifically, check out #39 (woman's gown, 2 side gores) and #41 (man's garment, 4 side gores).
So, secure in that knowledge I cut a new starting-place mockup and adjusted the seams to match the straight-cut fronts and backs, then combined my four side gores into two. Already, I like the shape much, much better, and Lorien's tweaks were going much smoother last night.
I'll hopefully update with progress photos soon, but I've got a sleepy BFF to go have adventures with and documentation to write.
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