Time for the rush

I knew something was wrong with my last finished project, the 1809 gown, that I finished more than one week before the event to which it would be worn. this was a most disturbing experience and I promised myself it would never happen again.

And I always try to keep my promises, so here I am, with less than a week left to finish the IKEA pet-en-l'air I have been hinting about so that it can make its première on the Christmas dinner.

For once, I have some progress pictures (with bonus views of our messy living room!)

Since I made myself a new pair of stays my dress dummy Glendora 2.0 no longer works as she is supposed to for fittings and mostly serves as a glorified clothes hanger. I can assure you that the pet-en-l'air looks much better on me.

OK, mostly the same picture, but you can see our messy living room better in this one.

What the ruching looks like, but I see that I could have done a better job in this spot. Will fix that.

I did add some more ruching to it after the pictures were taken, but this is pretty much how far I have gotten.

Left to do:

- Add hooks and eyes to one side of the stomacher (the other side is sewn to the bodice. I have no idea if this is anywhere near period correct but it saves my sanity. I can't pin stuff to save my life and that's why you never should walk around bare foot in our livingroom when I've been sewing).

- Add some kind of trim to the stomacher. I don't know what kind yet though.

- Add ruching to the sleeves and all way 'round the bottom edge of the pet-en-l'air.

- Possibly add a flounce to the petticoat (that I thankfully finished months ago!) but this depends on whether I have the time and if I have fabric enough left.

Those plans I had on making a better pair of pocket hoops and a nicer under petticoat simply will have to wait.

I should easily make it if I only put some effort into it. Last week I tried to make some sewing every evening, even if it was only a couple of stitching, just to feel that I was going somewhere. It's not that I don't want to sew, because I do, but I'm usually very exhausted from work and to be honest, I haven't had much love for this pet-en-l'air for some reason (and sometimes it's also very tempting to play Age of Empires III over LAN with you husband and ignore everything else, including housework. We got a new computer not long ago, you see...)

When this business is finished, I have a brand new project of lovelyness waiting for me. But more about that later.

The resurrection of Madame Berg

Hello, internets, how do you do?

Our internet connection decided to die one day. I waited for about a day and then called our provider, who finally managed to realise that they, for no reason whatsoever, had disconnected our modem. They promised that we would be on-line within 24 hours. They lied. Now, one week later, we finally have the service we pay dearly (far too dearly) for back and working.

But. It wasn't the end of the world, just annoying. It's actually kind of good to see that you can live without being on-line 24/7 once in a while, and live well too!

I haven't been totally disconnected, though: I have sneaked into internet cafés (internet café? Sooo 1998!) once in a while to do some checking in and drive-by commenting on the forum and blogs. Still - I have a lot of catching up to do on all your blogs and I look forward to it more than you can imagine!

One could be led to believe that this internet abstinence would have resulted in a huge boost to my sewing, and in a better world, that would undoubtedly have been the case.

In my world, however, the population (=me) suffers from an awful lack of energy and motivation, and I take the easy way out and blame the 1) dark, 2) dark 3) dark 4) rain and 5) work.

What I've mostly been ignoring lately is a pet-en-l'air made from the smoking ashes of my IKEA francaise, that I ripped up seam by seam because it was awful and a complete waste of good fabric.

It's progressing ever so slowly but time has finally come for sleeves. And we all know what joy that is.

My plan was to have the pet-en-l'air and a petti in the same fabric ready for Gustaf Skål's Christmas dinner on December the 4th but I have my doubts. If I do make it - great! - but I'm not going to stress it. Que sera, sera and all that.

And now, I have some serious blog reading to do! See you later...