Do These Pants Make My Butt Look Big

Wine + chocolate + Long Island ice tea + blog. It's been one of those weeks*.

Let's get some pants on!

They're 90% done right now - just have to add an eyelet/lace setup at the back of the waistband. The striping and the paneling doesn't match up along the side seams but it continues routinely enough across the front where it matters. The waistband, which is about five inches tall, doesn't have a front opening - the whole works is just big enough to pull on and the lacing at the back will keep them up.... in theory. The ankles are finished the same way. These have medium-weight fusible interfacing on the inside and are lined with a tan cotton-linen blend.

The best part? They act as an unofficial crinoline for the tunic skirting, though they still aren't enough to give the skirts the 'fluff' they need. But again, we'll get to that in a minute.

When we left the colpack last, the framework was completed but the fur was a work in progress. The only quality faux fur around this neck o' the woods comes in 4" strips so it has to be sewn together before it'll be wide enough. Here we go:

 

If you do it right, the seam becomes completely invisible (there is one seam roughly in the middle of the foreground piece and two seams on the circular piece). My experience with faux fur was minimal so this tutorial saved my butt royally.

Aaaaaaaand.... colpack! I got the interior band finished this week but don't have shots so it'll make an appearance next post along with info on the hackle and the flamme.

Now the skirts are... resisting and it wasn't until I went through three needles and broke my sewing machine this afternoon* that I realized how to get them right (again... one of those weeks). I thought marvelous head-way was made Thursday night when I patterned them up:




About what you'd expect, right?

So let's get those puppies cut out and interfaced. Got it? K, good.

Wait! What's this? So the sizes are suddenly different? The first and second skirts are far too big at the back? Quelle mystery! Alright, let's cut them down.

Okay, better. The sizing is good here but will it be the same once they're fluffed out? You BET it won't! Even more, how do we get the bastards fluffed out in the first place? Because there is some massive bloody fluff happening here.

The silhouette is about 70% of the Guard costume; you can fudge a lot of the other details but you've GOT to get the damn silhouette right. Contrary to expectation, the interfacing didn't do the trick apart from firming them up nicely and after a week of humming and hawing and gnashing of teeth, I got an idea.

"Wait... there are those... what are they? Farthin.... farthingale things? Like... in ladies' clothes? Or bustles... I think?"

 

BAM!!!

With a slightly different shape and placement around the hips, we're going to have all the fluff we need. It's only a matter of sewing six of these, fixing them under each skirt panel, and we're in business. Now I only need the sewing machine back from the shop (a week and a half) and we're in good shape. Also have to re-cut the top two skirts because they are... after all... too small.

It's almost fortuitous since I needed a good excuse to start the armour.

*It was a combination of things. Lay-offs at work, irate donors, funerals, ignorant women budging the line to order 100g of everything in the bloody deli, shit weather. Also, the cookie. You know that thing where you're eating in your car and a piece of it falls down between the seat and the console? Same deal, with a cookie. But it was half the bloody cookie and it went in that one hole where nothing comes out. You probably know the one - something goes down there and it's in there for good, no matter how you work the vacuum and adjust the seat.
**The product of a slipped stitch plate and a short temper.