Consultation with dance school lady went very well: three costumes ordered. :) I ordered the pattern from habithat, who emailed me back that it was out of stock, so rather than wait I ordered it again from two different places yesterday, just in case... First one arrived today! Thank you World of Sewing in Tunbridge Wells. I can get started on the patterns on Monday...
I also screeched 'HELP' at BL Joshi, for gold braid, and they hit the instinct button and sent 32m of gold bling for six and a half quid! It's cheap and cheerful, but perfect for the job, will sew on nicely and look great. They sent a sample of a much nicer braid, but it was a bit too wide and far too nice for this job! Ordered yesterday afternoon, arrived today! Well done the girls at Joshi, and well done Royal Mail! The great thing is that had it been totally wrong for this job, six and a half quid would have stashed it for Christmas stockings with the kids, so it wouldn't have gone to waste, whatever...
Today I ordered the fabric from the Household selection at Abakhan: Lovely curtain fabric for £1.20 per metre! Yikes! most TRIM is not that cheap! Fingers are crossed that it arrives on Tuesday at the latest! Abakhan are usually pretty speedy, and I did make a note on the order that it was an emergency! They chose a pink that is almost red - very like the Katherine of Aragon frock, an almost Royal Blue, and a tealish sort of green. With gold braid and buttons, this will be fun!
I poked about in my stash and found that I have about 120 very nice quality blazer buttons that will go out at 15p a shot. Each coat and waistcoat takes 34 buttons! I *was* going to use these for the historic project, but there are not enough to do both, so I have ordered more in a slightly larger size for that one. Unfortunately they didn't have enough of the size for the larger ones to go on the dance costumes.
Sorting out the dance school problem on Thursday meant that I did NOT get the sewing work done that day that I wanted to, so yesterday I concentrated on the historic wedding stuff, and prepared two jacket patterns from Period Impressions pattern 205 (Boy's Shell or Mucsician's frock coat). I've used this before, but the patterns I did then were way off for these two lads, so I had to trace from scratch... I am using McCall's 2639 (I can't remember if this is still available) for the trousers and shirts, same as last time, and luckily the way I'd prepared the patterns that time meant that I only had to fold out excess length on trouser legs, shirt bodies, and sleeves. THAT certainly saved a lot of time and bother! :D
Yesterday afternoon and evening I laid out the fabric and cut the shirts, the jackets, and the trousers... I'll cut the linings for the jackets once I know how much alteration the jackets need. I spent a large chunk of today sewing up the jackets and trousers (the zips went in like magic!), including putting a red stripe up the sides of the trouser legs! Fitting is tomorrow afternoon. I'm not aiming to have the shirts ready too, but I'll see what I have time for after swimming. Fitting is at two o'clock.
The dance school lady brought the lads over during the afternoon for measuring. A tall skinny 10 YO, a shorter, chunkier 11 YO, and an even chunkier 13 YO who is older than my James and MUCH smaller! He just about came up to James's shoulders! All three were great lads. OK, so James is huge, and Jamie the dancer is small for his age, if solid and square, but it did amuse us all to see the difference. The lads all thought it a great giggle, and went off and nattered about Wii's, X-Boxes, PSP2's and other arcane spell-casting boy hypnotizers while we ladies talked costume details... Mind you, the lads liked the bling and the buttons, so they do take an interest in more than the latest shooting game!
I don't have time to do a stitch-by-stitch project on these, not with two projects running at once, one with critical timing, but there will be pix later.