The finished bodice

Ok, I was bad and I didn't take many photos of the process of attaching the velvet outer layer to the lining of the bodice. I had volunteered to make a quick tutorial for a Rebel Legion thing on how to sew silk velvet, so I filmed more than I took stills. I will of course post the tutorial here when it goes up on the Rebel Legion site.

After some discussion over at the Historical Sew Fortnightly group, which is te group I know that gathers people from most different historical eras, I decided to use the 18th century way of constructing the bodice. It is a method that is not really found in 16th century clothing, so not the most historically accurate, but I still decided that the finished result would be so much better so it was worth going away from totall accuray. Here I also had my experiences with the first bodice to fall back to, and I wanted this to simply be better.

I mounted the velvet unto the lining, starting with the backpiece. I sewed it down over the side seam, and then I sewed the front piece on over both the seams, and when the front piece was turned to the front it looks like a normal seam.

The back looks a lot better when I'm wearing it, it's not crooked like on my mannequin. There was a bit of a challenge since I had cut out the back piece in the velvet as one piece, before I had to switch lining fabric and cut the back in two pieces instead.

The lacing strip for closure is attached to the inside of the lining.

The raw edge of the lining and the velvet is hemmed, and I have sewn the outer layers to the lacing strips inbetween the lacing holes. It is a bit fiddly but I can put the lacing cord through the lacing holes and in the opening between the fabric. For the finished piece I'm going to use a lucet cord that is thinner than the lacing I've used to test it with.

The finished result is that the cord disappears into the fabric and makes an invisible closure. If I want to open up the bodice it would still be correct to let some of the lacing show though, but my goal is to have it as invisible as possible.

Now it's on to the skirt, and thats a challenge on how I'm going to cut out the giant pieces that I need for a full circle skirt, when I only have a very limited floor to work on.  I also need to sew the lining of the skirt together, after I tried to make it smaller to fit with fabric I had for my first version.