The Saga of the Chemise

So I had a red silk corset that I  bought at Dragon Con to use for a Steampunk outfit.   What was I going to wear under it? That was the million dollar question.

After looking at a lot of pictures of women's "Steampunk" fashion on Pinterest, I decided that an achievable goal would be a chemise..  more Ren Faire than pure Victorian, but I had recently become enamoured of both Regency "Marie" sleeves and some sleeves in Alexander McQueen's pre-fall 2013 collection.  (and hey...  if I am going to radically mix periods like that, why do it half heartedly? :)

from Alexander McQueen's pre fall 2013 collection

Marie sleeves

I wore Italian Renaissance when I was in the SCA and I had made many, many renaissance chemises. This project would be a snap, even messing about with the sleeves!  (I should have known then that those would be famous last words)

I bought a cotton/linen blend from denverfabrics.com and was pretty happy with how it washed up (altho it was nowhere near the "handkerchief" weight it was listed as)  and figured that I could knock this out in an evening or two.  Unfortunately, this was a project that just didn't want to play nice.    But I finally got it to a point that I could live with the look of the finished garment (as long as I didn't think about the fixes I'd had to implement to correct issues during construction).  At some point I know I'm going to end up re-doing the whole thing, but it's something to wear to Sunday in the Park.