The Jacket complete
you can see the gold cord - I have many more metres of that to a) make and b) stitch on. I tried the doublet on my mannequin this morning -once it has a small amount of padding it will look something like this... 
quite a slender chap !! Anyone going to K&S on Sunday?
So here is Jane Wild suggesting a way to fix this.....
and following her idea it now looks like this....
the next thing was to hand stitch the 50 metres of cord in spirals all over the bodice...... 
having done this I put together the bodice with its lining and boning and now I have just to finish off the cording around the edges. The next step is to make the eyelets in the front and the stomacher. However I am now thinking about the skirt - and should the costume have panniers or a bustle? Here is one of my previous sets of panniers being tested out as a framework for a bustle....
you can tell that I had not been thinking about a bustle otherwise I would have changed the shape of the bodice to fit better but it may just work... hmmmm thinking time needed !!
- over stitched with matching cotton....(difficult to see)....
burnt back and over stitched with metallic silver (here you can see the work in progress so you can see the original matching cotton under the silver)
and here is what it currently looks like. 
There is more to happen to this piece but I am too ill to work and too ill to tell you more. See you again in a few days when I am better and working again.
Next three readable treats I have bought myself - which arrived in today's post!! Firstly the book 'On Fashion' by Christian Lacroix. 
I love his clothes and the fact that he is also influenced by 17th and 18th Century costumes. I have the opportunity of meeting him in May when he is giving a talk at the V&A but unfortunately I have to choose - between going all the way to London for a 1hr talk (and chance to 'talk to Christian over drinks' - although there will be over 100 people there - fat chance I'd really get to talk to him) or spending the day with my friends in the Textile 21 group as the talk is during our next meeting. How can I decide - I want to get on with my own work and have some useful chat with the girls but I would also like to meet Christian!! 
And last but by no means least is Janet Arnold's Volume 4 - although she died before this was completed it is wonderful what her colleagues did to finish it off for her and is definitely full of the most inspiring items..... brain going into over drive with ideas.
I have been coming home in the evening (as usual) although today I did get a bedroom key just in case I decided to stay - although the road has been bad I have driven really slowly and I like my own bed!!
and here is the start of my free machine embroidered one.......
Black cotton on calico - it is going to grow!! I'll show you when I eventually finish it!!
She also gave me a piece of cast Lotka paper which is also lovely. 
Then after the usual wonderful Urchfont lunch I spent a happy few hours looking through Sue Dove's sketchbooks - it is a shame I missed her 'tutorial' last evening. I was able to watch what the others were doing/had done. I am looking forward to the next three sessions, next year. They are a fabulous, inspiring group.
- unless you iron them and with the base fabric being a form of acrylic, heating it to force it to lie flat would make it sort of shrink/melt. If I was making this bodice out of silk, for example, I would iron the seams to one side and top stitch, but because I don't really a) want any top stitching and b) this would make them really fat, I opened out the seams and hand stitched all 10 seams open (on the inside). 
This was very relaxing to do whilst my mind spun with ideas for future projects all due to the inspiration of this group. I am going to scan all these flat seams as they look lovely and I could use the scans for something too! For the moment the bodice is going to stay on the mannequin whilst I ponder on how I can enhance it and raise the surface. In the meantime I have another tutu project about to start!!
Yummy !!