 back to my channel, I'm Rebecca, I'm just dressmaking. This is a very special video I've been working on for a little while now about making my dress based on the research into the Isabella McAvish Frazier dress. This is my Isabella dress. We had such an intense, long study period with the original gown that culminated in recreating a gown as a live demonstration in a museum over the course of the weekend, but at the end of the day I had very little sewing to do on that and didn't have at the end of the project a gown that fit me, and this all started the very very beginning with my desire to have to make my own dress based on Isabella McAvish Frazier dress. So we've come full circle and I finally made it. I was just starting it just before lockdown, so I finished it the first few weeks of lockdown which was quite interesting experience in that context in and of itself. I put it all up on Facebook originally as one of these sewing project photo vlogs and album that I have done for years and before I had any idea of doing any videos, so it took a little time and rejigging and looking at all of the photographs in a new light to try to make it into something that would work for video. So this is going to be somewhat of a slideshow, but interspersed with a few live action shots as well to try to explain things a bit better in a few places, but my focus here, my purpose, is to work through how to replicate several features of the original gown that were just like revelations for us. There were things that we had maybe seen in isolation in a few other gowns, but there were three things that were very intriguing and very rewarding to work out that all came together in this gown. The reason why it seems so rare and unusual to have these things all in one gown is because the fabric as I pointed out before and one of the reasons the stress is so intriguing is it is the only survivor before the year about 1800s, the only surviving gown from the manchill making age made of hard tartar. So there are things that of course working with that kind of fabric would just be done differently than with silks or cottons or linens, but we're going to walk through each of those intriguing construction features and order of operations. I'm able to do that with my gown and I'm going to share that with you step by step with reference to some photos of the original gown during our study process last year, but I'm not going to give them all away here at the beginning, so I think it's better if you watch, follow along so you see all these things happen in context. I'm going to start with a brief storyline on how the original was made in classic manchill making practice. See a manchill maker understood the landmarks of the style that she'd be making and she understood the landmarks on the body so she knew what parts of a shape or part of the gown needed to be situated on a particular part of your body, so she knew how to map that shape of the gown onto you so she could make a kind of a wearable mock-up right on the body from a fabric that in most cases would then be incorporated into the garment she'd be making when it would become the lining, which did mean that there was no separate record of her work. The gown itself was the record of her work, the testimonial to the way that she worked and it's only the gowns that survive that tell us those stories. These were not things that got written down in a notebook in a logbook somewhere. You may have heard before that against the period there was sort of made up with the lining and then the rest of the gown mounted onto the lining. That's more or less how it works. When Isabella had her gown made, the manchill maker would have held up a linen piece, pinned it to her, shaped the back piece by using a pinching in folds situated found out where the front center was going to be and then by smoothing and being very careful about grain and knowing exactly how grain works with stability and with allowing movement for shaping smoothly over a three-dimensional body, but working from the front and from the back things would be smooth and smooth and smooth and then eventually fitted through the side seams. Now the manchill maker would be drawing using a pen, a charcoal, a pencil, something to leave marks on the fabric. She'd be drawing the marks that would kind of serve a bit like the pattern piece but it would be the shape of the gown. She'd be drawing the gown onto her client, onto this fabric as they stood there and Isabella would have been obeying instructions, you know, to stand still, to turn a little bit, to raise an arm and hold it there, those sorts of things. Even seams might be mapped onto the body or at least sketched in as an indicator of the sorts of features on the gown that would be the final style. You're mapping out shapes according to the contours of the body, but at the end of the day you do need to know what that style's going to be and styles changed all the time. So that was the knowledge of the landmarks of the style being mapped onto the landmarks of the body and then cutting that linen accordingly, basically trimming away everything that was not going to be part of the gown and using that as the lining for usually the bodice, the key part of the gown. Then the rest of the gown could be assembled, perhaps at the same time, but being assembled separately into its sort of constituent parts that would eventually be mounted onto the bodice lining and it's the fashion fabric bodice that usually reflects all the wonderful aspects of the style and that would need to happen under the watchful eye of the mantra maker. The back panel in particular for this style of gown is the back panel really that marks the style and this would be the pleats that have been done according to fashion of the time and the preference of the client. The mantra maker would not be saying this is what you must have, it was up to the client to decide and the client's wishes prevailed always, but the mantra maker we would be paying attention to grain lines and how this was going to sit on the body and where any manipulated features such as pleats and seams where they're going to fall on the body. Once you had your linings cut the bodice front pieces exactly mirror they're the same as the lining for the bodice so these would be cut exactly the same using the center front as an anchor reference and determining then you know the length and then neckline shape and the bottom bodice edge shape with just the seam allowances added on for actual stitching. The fitting points as I mentioned are the side seams for the bodice and then normally for 18th century gowns the additional fitting fee that it seems to make sure the whole entire gown hung and sat properly on the body those would be through shoulder straps. Now in Isabella's case the fitting through the shoulders happened almost entirely on the back end of those shoulder straps where the strap meet the bodice back. I'll discuss how the front shoulder was dealt with and why it was possible to do it this way for Isabella's dress but it may not always work for everyone else it may not work for you so those issues I'll talk about as we go through this video. Sleeves are best drafted by draping but it appears that might not have been how it was done on Isabella if she wasn't available for that fitting at the right time. That created some problems and we loved seeing the ingenuity that was at work in fixing those problems. The skirts are assembled in a standard way no fitting required but there's an interesting thing you noted about the fitting. How does this process translate over into the pattern that American Duchess made after we had created the gown in Edinburgh last summer? At the heart of that pattern it's assumed that you're making a gown for yourself you're working alone. You can't be cutting the shapes draping a fitting on yourself in the same way that you if you were a client and having a trained someone else do that for you on you. So the methodology used is a series of packs so that you can achieve the same result but as I like to call it being your own manchowmaker the pattern pieces are shapes just as a manchowmaker would have produced in the period but they've been drawn to the proportions of a real person just like in the period of a similar size and proportion to what it seems Isabella was so we feel this is a fair representation but it's not a pattern taken from the original gown. We simply did not have the time or the resources to take a detailed pattern in the same way that dress historians like Janelle Arnold have done and continue to do for publication. But looking back at period practices we know that in many instances a manchowmaker didn't only do work in person working with a client and drafting cutting shapes on their body but sometimes she'd be making a gown based on shapes that were sent to her either drawn up by another manchowmaker or a pattern taken off the bodice of a gown that the client already had and knew fit well and in some cases would even would even be sent a pair of stays to use as the basis for coming up with the shapes determining the shapes needed to produce the gown bodice and it's that method that gives us a frame of reference for how American Duchess structured these pattern instructions if you don't already have shapes cut for you in the period manner then the shapes in the pattern instructions are your starting points they tell you what the gown bodice shape is then by superimposing a grid over that you can see the proportions of the body that those shapes were drawn for and from that you can use your own measurements to substitute against the key points of the shapes to tweak the sizing and the proportions to fit you the result is still a shape it's not a pattern piece that you can lay out and cut precisely along drawn lines it needs to serve as a canvas for you that is blank enough to allow for refinement through fitting but it's still roughly the right dimensions for your proportions so you don't find yourself running short and suddenly you need a piece of fabric to run one direction or one place and it's not there it would be roughly your proportions so your rough cut pieces might be quite different from your friends who's doing their own you'll both have the same gown shape though just cut so that as the pieces are refined and cut down the result is perfect for you now I'm making my own gown I did not reference the shapes provided by American Duchess because I already had my own this was not without its hiccups as you will see it's not a guarantee that it's going to fit like a glove if you just blindly cut certain lines I started with shapes that have been cut by a sewing workshop buddy and I did not fully understand them at the time so I ended up kind of sort of ditching those shapes going back to scratch and then working remotely with the workshop instructor who was Brooke Wellborn at Burnley and Trogbridge to sort of cut shapes again but then when I compared them with the shape's cut for me in the workshop I realized all the similarities and I realized where I had gone wrong and it just highlighted something I hadn't understood properly and something that I should have figured out and should have got to grips with during the workshop this process I'm going to admit was extremely frustrating it took a whole weekend to work through this I was in tears several times and sorely tempted to throw the whole thing in the bin but it worked through that and it was entirely worth it in fact I feel I learned a lot more than if it had all gone smoothly without any further investment of time energy and brain ache so without further ado let's get started I started with the shapes that were cut on my body in a Burnley and Trogbridge workshop this past spring these were then transferred onto brown craft paper as a more durable way of keeping them and I used these paper pieces to cut out the lining pieces for my gown bodice so the first step was to cut out the lining pieces according to my shapes then to measure out the center back piece of my tartan fold it in half lengthwise mark out the parameters of the length of the back bodice piece as I knew it would be needed for my measurements and stitch the center back seam according to the curved shape here in this photo I've already done that and pleated it I'm getting ahead of myself a bit here but here I can show you the paper shape laid out over the fabric to show you what the center back seam looks like because I stitched this in navy thread on this tartan there's no real other way to illustrate this because the seam just doesn't show but you can see the shape of the paper piece I then pleated the back piece and here I'll catch up this is where I got to you quite quickly based on my knowledge from the workshop at Burnley and Trogbridge so I'm already at this point up to page 10 of the pattern booklet I've skipped over all of the braining that needed to happen to get here and pages one through nine walk you through all of that don't skip it and don't rush so yes I've already cut and joined my skirt panels as per page I think five but I didn't take photos of that as it's just a lot of fabric wrangling and straight seams nothing that can be usefully illustrated with photos especially with the optical illusions that can happen when you're dealing with tartan but now we get to the exciting bits those back pleats and I like everyone else in our project team and the consultants that we had in the background have thoughts about these plates in a talk or workshop I can give a lot more detail but suffice to say here just trust the pattern there is a logic to how the Isabella dress pleats were done but it's not the same logic we've seen in a lot of other gowns and frankly because there are no other tartan gowns of this period it would be impossible to translate everything we thought we knew about pleated back gowns to this one so you may find yourself frustrated you may find yourself in violent disagreement with how the pleats seem to be playing out under your hands I ripped out these pleats more than once but at some point you're just going to have to trust it and move ahead your pleats may not turn out like any other pleated back gown you've made before and that's okay have a look on page seven that first paragraph you are in charge of your gown in any case at this stage I'm now ready to baste the pleats into place and to get rid of all the pointy pins hooray and then I can move on to steps nine and ten on page ten to turn under the neckline seam allowance and top stitch the inner pair of pleats to secure them then this pleated back will be ready to mount to my linen bodice lining which I've already cut as you've seen as I said in the introduction remember I'm working with the lining pieces cut from shapes already draped on my body so all of the fitting has been done as a standalone project this is different from following the pattern instructions step by step if I were following the pattern instructions I would be building up a lot of the components of the gown as discrete projects and then later assembling them into a gown at which point then all the fitting aspects would be addressed I'll show you my lining pieces in the next few photos but I'm flagging this up now because when I get to the bodice back lining section of the instructions on page 10 I'm doing the opposite of what you'll be doing if you're following the pattern instructions you will be applying your pleated back piece onto a large uncut rectangle of fabric and then cutting away the excess I on the other hand already have the basic shape I need in my lining so I will be cutting away the tartan to match it when you do your cutting of the lining be very very conservative and don't cut too much just cut the lining edges to match what you have with your pleated fashion fabric there's no point in cutting it larger than your fashion fabric panel as you won't have enough fashion fabric to cover it but equally crucially don't cut it smaller than your fashion fabric or you may not have enough lining to work with when you're fitting here is my back bodice shape with the center back seam stitched in cut with generous seam allowances about half an inch just ignore the fainter lines you can see that was I've reused this fabric from something else and those lines were drawn with a Frixian pen so they'll disappear when I iron this and you can see in the next photo yes those lines have disappeared so here is my back bodice lining laid out over my pleated tartan back piece the center back seam has been very carefully aligned the fabric smoothed away from the seam that center seam towards each side and the edges all pinned down I've now cut away the tartan to the same shape as the lining plus another oh it's about a quarter to half inch and yes that's in addition to the half inch seam allowance that I've already given myself in the lining just for caution I probably cut away a bit too much the excess too soon because I did continue to tweak the position of the lining on top of the tartan here and in the end came out with a little less extra on one side than the extra I had on the other side the seam allowance in the lining provides plenty of buffer though so I should be okay I've now stitched the lining and the tartan together with a prick stitch down from the outside kind of a stitch in the ditch through both center back seams this is step four on page 10 under the heading bodice back lining the goal here is to get the two layers as closely aligned and then secured together I have also turned down the seam allowances along the top edges and basted these will be finished off later but for now I want to prevent any fraying of those raw edges as I work on other parts of the gown this is looking at it same stage from the outside you can see the basting along the sides hopefully this tartan is very busy and I'm afraid that some of these photos it's not going to be as clear as I would like as if it were a solid color but the basting does visually mark where I expect to be the outer parameters needed for the back I'll get this right yet the back bodice and it ends right at the waist so it's anticipated seam lines but those can change later at this point don't stitch anything at the waist line as there's still quite a lot more you're going to be doing there just get all the outer edges the kind of outline of the bodice secured I confess that at this stage looking at my tartan I had hope for better pattern matching along the center back seam but considering how much curvature I have in my back I'm fairly content with this and to be honest it's better than what's on the original gown believe it or not moving on to bodice fronts this is page 11 of the instructions read the guidance carefully about cutting your bodice fabric and lining whether you're going to cut on the straight of grain as the original or on the bias grain line is really important and this was something that did have its implications in the original gown and our recreation in Edinburgh because it's crucial that the fabric that goes over your shoulder must be on the straight of grain the original gown has the lining for the bodice and the shoulder strap cut all in one piece now my shapes for these have been fitted and cut separately so my first job here was to figure out how the shoulder straps attached to the bodice in the fashion fabric and then use this as a pattern piece to cut the lining all in one and because my left shoulder and right shoulder are not the same they're quite different it turns out I will need to cut each bodice lining piece separately as unique pieces I can't just cut two identical pieces and flip one to be the left and one to be the right basically the seam at the front of the shoulder strap in the fashion fabric in my tartan it works like an extension of the bodice not really as a separately fitted strap on to the bodice fronts there are only six steps here in the pattern instructions but you do need to read them carefully as each is jam packed I find it really helpful to go through with a highlighter and pen and pick out the action points things like cut pin turn press baste stitch I like to somehow differentiate between the lining and the fashion fabric so I circle those references and I underline pieces and parts and then sometimes I'll cross out or put a tick through these pieces and these marks as I complete the action that needs to be done to them is this messy yep and you may have a better way whatever helps you to not miss a step and not do the wrong thing to the wrong piece for example all through this I found myself working on both the fashion fabric and the lining together in concert when in fact it's less confusing if you just do it in the order American Duchess tell you to do it so how did this go for me the pattern instructions are great they're very clear and they helped ground me starting this section my first task was to use my separate bodice and shoulder shape pieces to produce a single cut in one shape but when I turned to my fabric stash I found I didn't have any piece big enough to do that so I futst and fiddle while mulling over the options in my head I consider just doing the bodice fronts and then dealing with shoulder straps later in an Italian gown sort of way if you have the American Duchess guide to 18th century dress making to cross-reference how that's done then you'll know what I'm talking about but then I thought no I need to stay on track with the pattern instructions as closely as possible if I'm really to be sure I understand how it's written and can help teach others and this gown needs to reflect that so I decided to piece the shoulder straps both the fashion fabric by way of an extension as per the instructions and as per the original gown and the lining as if it's pieced so that I could then treat it as if it had been cut in one I hope I haven't lost you are you with me so far hmm so that's what I did and I spent hours of mental wrestling and arguing with myself as I did that not because of anything to do with the gown with the pattern with anything of any real consequence for the project but all to do with the fact that I'm using new period technique shapes that I didn't draft basically I had a complete crisis of faith and it was all in my head not trusting these shapes yes I knew it had been cut on me I was right there yes I had approved each stage as best I could in a mirror yes it had been checked and signed off by a qualified metro maker instructor who I absolutely trust yet all the while I had an internal dialogue going why was this drawn this way I would never drop this way but wouldn't I hmm round and round all the while as I lay out layers turned pinned pressed and basted all those action words and constantly checked my pattern matching progress because seriously I just needed to be putting that kind of extra pressure on myself right after several cycles of this oh this shape can't really be my shape never mind to keep going oh this is going together okay oh god it's never going to fit why the hell is this the way it is throwing it down making tea picking it back up grumbling for another hour even while the garment itself was going together just fine and then throwing it down again and stomping outside for a short walk well here you go here are the bodice front steps one to five so everything is in place trim and tidy and basted ready for step six my problem the short stubby stomps where the shoulder straps attach how little neckline there seems to be how wide the bottom peak looks there is no reason why this can't all work on a real body specifically my body looking at shapes drawn on your three-dimensional body lying flat on a table messes with your perception of reality oh let's just write the day off to me having a COVID-19 anxiety attack shall we here's the inside I'm unsure how I lost some lining piece acreage at the side seam on the left bodice piece towards the top of that edge I've nearly lost the seam allowance after spending far too much time trying to figure out how where this happened I'm prepared to just work with it I may need to piece something in possibly a sleeve setting stage we shall see in some desperation having just about convinced myself that these shapes could only fit a cardboard box not a conical torso I mounted what I had of the dress so far on to a dress form which while it lacks my sperm curvature and shoulder asymmetry at least it's wearing a version of my stays and is approximately the right size and now seeing the front with the correct overlap of the top front and the center points as marked each carefully aligned I'm okay with this yes it's square whereas the original Isabella dress neckline is quite round but it's nowhere near as shoulder shoulder straps over my sternum as I had hysterically feared it would be so onward friends I'm beginning to trust the shapes there's no guarantee there won't be further wobbles in the days to come but there's only one way to get through this and that's forward not back the last step of assembling the bodice fronts finishing those turned and basted edges the instructions suggest a hem stitch or running stitch the original gown features pardon my french la pointe of Robert Trevor so is the main yes the so-called underhand hem stitch which I have done a video about that's what's on the original gown and it's beautifully done and I highly recommend trying this just the results just love it it took me several garments to get comfortable with this stitch so it may look funny if you've never done it before but now with a little practice I love it and it doing it on any garment always puts me in mind of the beautiful job that Perrin did on the recreated Isabella gown in Edinburgh in fact I like the look of this stitch so much it's a shame the navy thread disappears into the tartan on the right side of the bodice I'm seriously thinking of taking it all out and restitching with red stop this is the work back to the drawing board stop this is where the niggling doubts and uncertainties caught up with me I made a whole new mock-up cut from the shapes I brought home from the workshop took a bunch of photos and videos and sent them over to Brooke at Burnley and Trowbridge and spent a weekend tussling with what was good what was bad and what to do about it and it's a complete redraft folks and I figured out what it was about the bodice front shapes that was making me tear my hair out so I redrew them and took the opportunity to reshape the shapes to look more like Isabella's original gown I checked the new mock-up against the original pieces drawn up in the workshop I made a mock-up according to the redrafted master shapes here's the front and here's the back just need to snug up that bit of excess probably through the side seams and possibly shorten the center back although the weight of the skirts will tug this down a bit and after all this back to the drawing board stuff here's the reason why I needed a lot more precision in knowing where the shoulder straps attached to the bodice fronts back in the workshop we pinned and sketched but then didn't put precise points or dots or arrows or some mechanism to see that this needs to match to this and getting the straps attached at exactly the right angle depends on that this photo shows the points where the straps are pinned to the bodice fronts now shoulder straps are usually separate as a fitting tool to allow for the fact that in most people the level of the shoulders slopes to some degree and it's not horizontal with the waistline so for you the key takeaway for making your gown your shoulder straps or pieces do need to be cut on the straight of grain they may eventually end up with some shaping to the ends or the shoulder edge the sleeve edge but the neck edge needs to be on the straight so what do you do if you have high straight shoulders that sit nearly horizontal or parallel with the floor and that means that the angle of your shoulders is at right angles with your center front then yes you can cut your lining fabric all in one bodice fronts extending into shoulder straps just like the original gown if however you like me with one shoulder at least have sloping shoulders then you need to cut your shoulder straps separately to ensure that they are on the straight of grain and then fit them at the appropriate angles where they join the bodice front now my left shoulder on the right in the photo is cut on the straight of grain and it meets the bodice front still on grain but the right shoulder on the left in this photo meets the bodice front at a 15 degree angle i've put a second row of pins in the shoulder strap to show the cross grain to illustrate that angle relative to the seam line where the shoulder strap attaches so how do you decide what is too much angle what's the cutoff for deciding whether you can cut in one or will need to cut separate shoulder straps now i discussed this with brook and i'm going to tell you the recommendation that she gave to me for my circumstances but i think there's a lesson to be learned here and perhaps a bit of a guideline for you brook recommended to me that i could cut the lining all in one piece provided i could keep it on the straight of grain down the torso to approximately the mid front waist this would mean that the center front edges of the bodice front would be on the bias and that's okay and that's what american duchess describes in the pattern on page 11 but if i'm taking brook's guidance to the correct conclusion then my advice to you would be if the slope of your shoulders is such that the fabric is going to skew towards more bias for example if your grain line is going to hit your bodice front edge higher than the waist then you do need to cut your shoulder straps separately after a lot of mulling this over i reckon my right shoulder is borderline and i could have gotten away with cutting it all in one but i really wanted to have the center front edges of the bodice on the straight of grain using salvages to eliminate any possibility of stretching and warping through the torso over the coming years of hopefully wearing this gown in terms of new learning for the isabella gown and how it was made from her gown it seems that isabella had straight quite level shoulders unfortunately this isn't readily seen when it's mounted on a modern dummy or dress form because dress forms have sloping shoulders but when you look at the grain lines of the shoulder strap to the bodice they're both on the straight of grain and straight with each other and this is one of the first things her mantra maker would have discovered at the first fitting when she first lay a length of fabric over isabella's shoulder and began smoothing it down the front of her torso i wonder did she feel pleased when she discovered this given all the indications that this gown was made at speed and that isabella was not always available for a fitting or a check at just the right times i reckon that mantra maker must have breathed a little sigh of relief because this would mean a little less time cutting and fussing about with shoulder strap fittings and needing isabella to be on hand for that everything could go just that little bit more interrupted and fast and guess what for our gown recreation project it turns out that george's shoulders were very very nearly as straight and level which meant that abbey could drape her with the bodice front on the straight of grain continuing on the grain up over the shoulder in one uncut piece that's a lovely piece of serendipity and goes a little way to making up for my disappointment in discovering we would not be able to align the shoulder straps precisely with the plates on the back of the gown as we had hoped my shoulder straps need to be at such different angles from each other that i had to decide to treat them individually and separately so no continuous uncut bodice front to shoulder strap linings for me time to recut the bodice fronts on their own using my new master shapes now having very clearly set out where each shoulder strap needs to attach note that at this stage dealing with just the fashion fabric this is still in line with how the original gown was done it's having to cut the lining in two pieces bodice and shoulder strap that differs from the original for safekeeping i have cut my paper copies of this master shape with the shoulder straps integral and uncut this means there's no chance of them getting separated from each other and me ending up all confused again about how the shoulder straps attached to the bodice fronts and this basically means i am once again as with my first attempt attaching the shoulder straps both in the tartan and crucially in the lining to the bodice fronts as if there seemed extensions you'll remember i had to do that with the lining in my first attempt because i couldn't find large single pieces of linen now i'm doing it because i understand how to fit my shoulders properly and why uncut pieces just won't work at all for my right shoulder as i've said the left is possible but i'd rather take the same approach on both sides i am not fitting these in the usual manner of shoulder straps per se i just want to recreate the order of construction of isabella's sleeves and the back shoulder area so i need to be able to pretend that those shoulder straps are a continuous part of the bodice fronts this photo shows the result from the outside and here's the result from the inside it's this part of the stage that departs from how the original gown was made and now after all that i am ready to finish the edges as per step six on page 11 and yes this time i'm going to use a contrasting coloured thread oh my goodness this is so much better i might scoop out the neckline just a bit more as the original is quite oval in shape but that can wait till a final fitting i'm debating about adding lacing strips my fabric is 10 ounce wool with a very fine light tightly woven linen for the lining as this is intended to be a summer weight gown so i know the gown doesn't need lacing strips inside the bodice fronts but this is also supposed to be a teaching gown so maybe i can always add that later i suppose for teaching aspects the key is to capture things that we could not include in the recreated gown as i'll be using both gowns for workshops i know the one distinctive feature we were not able to do on the recreated gown is something i will be able to do on this one since i want to be able to wear this gown as part of my everyday historical wardrobe my preference for myself would be to leave out the lacing strips but put a tie inside the back waist because of my spine curvature and that that's something Isabella didn't have on her gown i now need to draft sleeve pattern so that's the next job the slave drafting was a draping or shapes exercise in the burley and trove bridge workshop and i really should have made one then but i prioritized the bodice shapes while i was there figuring i could do the sleeve shape on my own later at home because to be honest i've always done fairly well with bog standard sleeve pattern pieces just by adding a little width in practice the finessing comes when setting in the sleeve and that's going to be the case with every gown in the past i've sometimes skimped on seam allowance in the front arms eye area so now i pretty much cut a generous unshaped sway the fabric however today i have gone back to basics and officially draped a sleeve on myself and created a rough basic shape that i could test on the gown such as it is right now just to be sure it does fit into the arms eye then i trans transferred that fabric shape to craft paper cleaned up the lines a little bit drew the grain lines that sort of thing the same shape will produce both left and right sleeves i just flipped the pattern piece over now to cut the tartan for these sleeves it's at this stage that i will adapt the details of the shape to more closely reflect the cut of the original gown i will be closely following the shapes on page three of the american dutch's pattern to do this i positioned the sleeve shape onto the tartan and i chose points in the tartan set as landmarks to make it easier to pattern match when laying out pinning and cutting the second sleeve i double checked where i want to cut the bottom of the sleeve for the extension to be seamed in relative to the crook of my elbow the line is the cutting line with the actual seam hopefully hitting just above the crook of the arm i have thoughts at this point because i think we got the sleeves on the recreated dress longer on georgia than the original gown was on isabella this is a tricky issue we had carefully measured the length of the sleeves when studying the original but we had only one concrete clue about the extension as it was almost entirely covered up by the cuff on the outside and the lining on the inside all that said i think lauren has done a masterful job of writing the instructions in the pattern booklet so that you can decide how you cut and construct the sleeves on your gown i use taylor's chalk to trace out the outline of the sleeve with marks to indicate the line to cut the bottom of the sleeve here i've cut the sleeve linings these run continuously within the sleeve and the extension so they cover over the seam in the fashion fabric here are the sleeves and the lining from the outside then i pinned the sleeve extension in preparation of seaming it here i'm showing both sleeves the sleeve on the left is shown from the outside and the sleeve shown on the right is shown with the inside facing up so that you can see the lining turned back to show the seam in the extension if that makes sense the extensions are seamed in and here we see it from the outside with the edges of the entire sleeve shape basted this is step four on page 12 i've used red thread for basting the sides and top edges of the sleeves so i'll be sure to remove those for the bottom edge i've used natural linen as i'm still considering whether i might end up leaving those basting stitches in the raw edges were roughly overcast in the original gown and this doesn't show because the cuffs cover it all up i'm unsure how i will treat this when i get to that step but at the moment i feel that hemming or otherwise neatly finishing would be just superfluous and it wouldn't really honor what we see in the original gown not to mention there was so much basting just left in in the original gown and never removed it's a funny small thing to be debating about but we'll see so here we have the extensions seamed in from the inside with the edges all basted so this is step four on page 12 now complete moving on to assembling these into actual sleeves these steps are on page 12 again this very instruction dense page packed into just four steps so i very carefully marked out and highlighted and used circles and underlining to make sure i knew exactly what actions applied to what pieces and that i wouldn't get things mixed up and that i wouldn't miss something the slave assembly there in step four specifically second sentence what i call four b to fold back the seam allowance of both the fashion fabric on the lining on the back edge of the seam and it's your job to keep track of which is the back and which is the front actually keeping track of right side wrong side inside outside that sort of thing is a recurring theme it's such a basic sewing skill i haven't been mentioning it but i will mention it now because it's very easy to go wrong i can't tell you how many times so far in this gown i've discovered that i turned a seam allowance the wrong wrong way around and proceeded to assemble something completely wrongly it happens now the sleeve assembly step five i've gone ahead and stitched the lapped edge down that's not in the instructions until page 15 but i'm omitting the whole overfitting drama that we found in the original gown if you want to learn all about that you can watch that in american duchess's video which i will link to in the card above i do love a nice spaced back stitch and here are the sleeves all assembled the next step is to cut out the cuffs before you do this double check the circumference of the bottom of your sleeves just in case your sleeve size is different from the gridded size in the pattern booklet to fit you you then want to add approximately two inches to create the little open wings at the back of the cuff plus add seam allowance so i've basted up the long edges and seamed the short ends pressed open the seam allowances and here's where i realize what i had forgotten i cut two identical cuffs and then i treated them exactly the same in terms of right side and wrong side kind of what's the outside what's the inside it had to do with which i turned the seam allowances and basted them down exactly the same so i ended up with two identical cuffs instead of two cuffs that mirror each other one on each arm can i be bothered to unpick one press it flat and start over heck no so the plates are in and stitched down on each of these cuffs and i checked them next to the sleeves and yes i like this now the cuffs need to be lined so you turn the cuffs inside out lay in your lining pieces and start stitching them down starting from the widest point in the center of the back of the cuff and i've got to say i hated every second of this it was extremely fiddly on one cuff the lining did not want to lie smoothly especially the rounded the curved edges there at the front and i just think it looks awful but you know what it was worth it turn the right side out the outsides look great here they are just pinned to the sleeves there was no point in attaching them until after the sleeves have been fitted into the gown because the cuffs will just add weight and unwieldiness at the bottom of the sleeves during the fitting so i didn't want to mess with the next stage of construction is the bodice fitting important stuff this is pages 14 to 15 steps one to four i already know more or less where the side seams need to be the bodice back and front pieces have basting lines showing my shapes and those are a natural linen thread so from a preliminary trying on session i then adjusted the placement of the side seams and basted new lines again in red thread here i've put the gown on the dress form to illustrate how the order of operations is going to go to attach the fronts to the back the key is to treat your back bodice fashion fabric and lining as one and you're going to attach the bodice front lining to them keep the bodice front fashion fabric well out of the way and make sure you know exactly where your waistline is on my pieces it's shown by way of basting from my shapes but it doesn't hurt to mark further with taylor's chalk or a frixian pen or just just a sewing pin so here we are up to step five on page 15 in the section for first fitting bodice and sleeves i've decided not to overfit my sleeves as per the original gown so i'm diverging from the instructions in step five that tell you to keep your arms straight and crank the sleeve up tight if isabella had had a proper fitting that would just have never happened her range of motion would have been checked at the time but i already know that i wanted to diverge from the original gown in having the sleeves a bit shorter and fuller anyway but this is still a good time to try things on check things out before sealing the deal on the bodice side seams so i pinned the sleeves in but i use a slightly different rotation between the left and the right and how they were pinned in just to see which way i preferred i'm pretty pleased with the bodice the shoulder straps are pinned to the back bodice top edge according to the markings on my shapes pattern and then i roughly pinned in the sleeves a few things i'm noticing i think i'd like the shoulder straps to sit a bit further up on my neck and i want to bring the sleeve head further up for now the key thing is the fit of the bodice before i progress to seaming the sides there's scope to possibly pinch in a bit more but everything lies nicely so i'm going to go with this flashback so how does this sequence in the pattern instructions and the way that i'm working with my gown compare to what happened with our project in edinburgh as you may have noticed in the pattern booklet different parts of the gown are made up almost like little mini projects from assembling your skirt panels to preparing the bodice back and then pleating it preparing bodice fronts which are finished right down to the point of the hemming being done around most of the edges and you make up the sleeves you make up your cuffs it's only now that we're nearly ready to start putting these assembled components together it was by having six people working on these various parts of the gown simultaneously last june that we were able to make the entire gown in just 14 hours and this is what a period manchur maker would have done in the period if she were working to a tight deadline she would have got day labor in abby's priority as the lead manchur maker was the cutting the fitting and everything to do with that pleated back she drew the shapes on georgia the day before so the first morning of the event she traced them out onto the linen cut all the pieces for the bodice and the slaves handed them out to her day laborers in her workshop so that then she could concentrate on pleating the back so while she was doing that alex and katie were assembling the skirts the sleeves that she had cut were passed to me to baste the tartan and the lining pieces together parent and lauren were making the cuffs then lauren and i finished assembling the sleeves mixed in with all of this lauren abbey parent katie and i all took turns on the interpretation side of things with our live audience explaining describing demonstrating and answering questions about just about everything imaginable relating to 18th century women's clothing all of this was happening at once so that when it came time for the first fitting on georgia abbey with assistance from lauren could hold out a hand like a surgeon and have bodice fronts sleeves etc etc handed to her ready to go so in the pattern instructions the sections are in a somewhat arbitrary order up to now you're the one doing them all so you can do them in pretty much whatever order you want you just need to be sure that all the garment components are ready when it comes time to put them together we are nearly at that point in the booklet you're next asked to make the scary cut however as that's immediately precipitous for pleating and attaching skirt panels and i prefer not to have anything interrupt my attention to that area i'm going to advance to the section for attaching the bodice fronts to the bodice back before i make the scary cut so i'm basically swapping out pages it's 16 and 17 in the booklet and as it happens looking back i think that's what we did when making the recreated gown last june if you have a look at the photo of abbey at the top of page 17 she's clearly working on the inside of the side seam that's the first stage step one but from the rumble of the tartan below the waist it's clear that the scary cut has not yet been made so having said all of that about the order of operations here i am with my gown doing what you see abbey doing on page 17 from the outside here we have the bodice lining stitched through all the layers here is a kind of a close-up i hope this shows that from the outside you can see a fine short prick stitch in white and you can also see a number of basting lines now to fold over the edge of the tartan and create a smooth curve over the side seam and pin that down and then stitch it down i do love a fine spaced back stitch have i said this before spaced back stitch here is the completed side seams from the inside i've left all my basting stitches in here's a close-up of the finished side seam with the bodice lining hemmed down or felled down if you like and then the line of spaced back stitch through all layers sewn from the outside you can see that on the inside it's all showing so now we are ready page 16 the scary cut firstly let me say this cut is not any scarier than any other cutting of your fabric especially all that cutting you did at the beginning like every other cut once done it can't be undone but i suppose this cut is pretty critical because of its angle once you've committed to the angle you can't change it and the angle is the creation of the back waistline or more accurately actually the hip line certainly from an aesthetic point of view you'll want to choose that angle carefully and there is also as the pattern instructions mention a risk of inadvertently rendering your bodice too short so it's better to err on the side of caution and give yourself a wee bit of extra but not too much extra or your hip line will be way too low okay so yeah it's all just a bit scary the thing is it has to be done bear in mind your end goal here right now you've got a smooth bodice and smooth panels of fabric that will make up a skirt you need to be able to pleat up the rest of the central back panel of fabric it already has this bundle of pleats in its middle and the only way you're going to be able to pleat that is to separate it from the fabric above it you are deciding what will be bodice and what will be skirt and henceforth dealing with those bits separately to build them up and finish them off as smooth bodice and pleated skirt joined together so you have to make that cut to prep and plan my cut line i first checked the line of the back bodice lining as that lining has already been fitted so to speak from creating the shapes so this is the hip line i want my finished gown to take for anyone using their fitted to them pattern pieces as originally cut from your pattern you'll notice the lining has a straight edge so you need to have a point below that aim for in cutting your hip line to that end american duchess gives you a measurement to use it's way back on page seven step three that lets you determine the length of your center back seam and it's that point that you'll use for calculating the angle of your scary cut so after checking that my lining pieces still look pretty symmetrical or they should i pinned the stitch lines i then flipped the gown over and sorry i didn't get a photo of that to check that the lines formed by those pins fell more or less symmetrically across the tartan set too i did not drive myself crazy planning absolutely perfect pattern matching for where the eventual cuts are going to divide bodice from skirt because it will be possible to finesse this slightly when attaching the skirts as i'll then be deciding the path the attachment seam will take across the tartan but still it's always good to think ahead and not create trouble for a future me i then use scissors to cut most of the cut on one side taking care not to get too close to the top fold of the outer pleat i made this cut with the gown wrong side up with one finger firmly held over that pleat so i knew how close i could get i use the curve of the lining as my cut line if you've had to draw your own line as per step one i strongly suggest you do this from the top side using some kind of taylor's chalk or other fabric marker that can be removed draw a gentle curve from the bottom edge of the bodice front remember that piece still has its seam allowance sticking out so you draw towards the end of the center back seam which is that arbitrary distance below the waist that i talked about earlier remember the edge of the bodice front is pretty much at your waistline if you cut straight across to the waistline at the center back that will be too high once your line has been cut up to the outer pleat then very carefully lift that pleat and snip just a tiny bit underneath no more than quarter of an inch and make sure you're only cutting one layer of fabric and not catching anything else now you can attach all those skirt panels that you prepared back at the very beginning i assembled my skirt panels utilizing selvages for the seams with the pocket holes so i'm dealing with raw cut edges here to join onto the central back panel i used a mantra maker seam i have a confession i hate the seaming technique for the bulk that it adds but it does do the job here's the mantra maker seemed me outside and wow apparently passed me decided the future me would want to pattern match across the entire skirt of course she did because of course i do i just wasn't super careful to line it up when i actually pinned and stitched hmm and now for the most fun i've ever had making a pleated back gown now i know pleating is not universally popular with all but i do love it in every conceivable situation however in most cases it does involve a bit of measuring and or maths for example if you need to pleat 60 inches down to 18 inches or pin two pieces together halves and quarters and pleat down by section or some such but not this gown you simply decide where on the bodice front you want the front edge of the skirt to hit and i was really quite lucky i very nearly have a pattern match or at least a handy stripe in the tartan set to use that will help me make sure i get it even on both sides from there don't pay any more attention to the bodice don't measure anything don't mark anything just sit there and make knife pleats away from you pointing towards the center back to your heart's content eyeball the width of the pleats on top don't think too much about the depths underneath just make sure you're putting away at least the same depths as your top widths and consider gradually increasing those depths as you go further to increase the volume of the skirts over whatever score skirt support like a bum pad that you might plan on wearing but just pleat unless you're shoving five inches underneath every single pleat as you go i guarantee you will run into the central back pleat structure with lots of loose fabric still left holy excess fabric batman what do i do now just shove it underneath the central pleats job done out of sight out of mind seriously on a side note remember that pattern matching thing just a few thoughts firstly straight away when attaching the skirt panels together i noticed the front ones were much longer than the centerpiece and the pattern matching was determined from the bottom which was going to be hemmed upwards of course but why longer because the bodice fronts end at the waist and so they sit higher than the center back all the parts of the center skirt panel which seemed too short when the scary cut is being made but they're going to end up underneath the central pleats and it's all those taller skirt panels that are going to meet the bodice edges both at the front the sides and on the back sort of flanks hips area area you want that height so those panels are longer the pattern pieces are designed that way so i hope you followed instructions another thought the moment i started pinning skirt panels to the center back panel i realized oops my pocket holes are too high i put them where i usually put them completely forgetting at the time that the way the skirts on this gown will need to be leveled from the top not the hem and it was the same on the original isabel again i had to laugh to myself when i discovered this this is a highly successful bit of reverse engineering here high fives to american duchess but my pocket holes are even okay back to the gown to pleat the other side and then baste the living daylights out of all of this got two lines of basting all the pleats down and all the pleating done i popped the dress onto a mannequin just to check the skirts were hanging level and while i'm here i'll have a quick look at where the skirts need to attach to the bodice along the waistline in order for the hem to fall level that's step two on page 19 and i'm thinking the skirt front edges are much too far over on the hip the next thing to do is having hung the skirt level on the bodice mark out the waistline on the skirt to determine exactly where to stitch looking at steps three to four on page 19 you need to mark the waistline on the skirt on the outside it needs to be on the outside because the top edges will be folded over towards the inside covering up any marks if you've left them on the inside i started marking with taylor's chalk then realized this might be difficult to get out completely on wool so i marked the waistline with pins instead this was actually pretty easy to do from the inside right along the waistline that's already been marked right on the bodice lining because the pins show through and exactly as i've noticed with my italian gowns in the past which involves a very similar method of attaching skirts to bodice the top line of the skirt panels ends up pretty straight on me i don't know exactly why and i don't know if there's a more flattering line that i should try to do it might just have something to do with the shape and fit of my stays in any case i've been pretty happy with how this has ended up looking on previous gowns so there's a certain relief in seeing something very similar come out here and yours may look completely different this photo i hope you can see shows the chalked lines curving there on the flanks or rear hip area and here are the skirt panels with the top edges folded under along that marked waistline this is step three on page 19 flip the gown over looking at it from the inside you can see those top edges folded folded down along the marked waistline this allows for a seam allowance so that all the whipped area is well clear of the stitch line that you'll be taking when you join the skirt to the bodice this is from the inside again step three on page 19 just note i'm diverging from the pattern again in terms of the order of construction because i'm right here dealing with skirts and waistline i don't see any disadvantage to just continuing to work on this before i go back to the bodice and sleeve fitting so i've just skipped from page 19 ahead to page 23 to finish dealing with this and then i'll come back so folding down is step one and whipping down the folded edges is step two here is one side of the skirt all whipped down then pinning the folded edge of the top of the skirt to the bodice now you're working right sides together remember that seam allowance i mentioned about three photos back here you can see why that whipped folded edge needs to sit above the line that you've previously marked to be the waistline here on the right side you can see one side pinned the other side is unpinned so you can see the two sets of edges that need to be joined here's a close-up of the skirt and bodice pinned together right sides together and if i just rotate that rounds you're looking at it from the bodice side remember the bodice you're dealing with some raw edges on the other side that's not yet been pinned you can see here the wrong side of the bodice the right side of the skirt before they're pulled together and aligned to be pinned for stitching once i had everything pinned i put the gown on the dress form again just to double check working with a tartan that's so different from the Isabella gown i have stretches of time where i forget i'm making an Isabella gown and then i see mine like this and it hits home that central pleat structure with all the other pleats pointing all around the body towards it with no visible top stitching this is not a configuration or construction i've seen before have you and yep i'm much happier with the position of the front edges of the skirt it's much closer to the original gown and now with the top edges folded over we've got that distinctive little bubble that we see on the original gown major milestone in the making of this gown joining the skirt to the bodice with big back stitches this is step four on page 23 this was so easy in this fabric unlike the recreated gown which it turns out only one person on the team had the strength to do the next day i had a sort of lockdown induced adult today sort of day so i spent it just hemming the entire skirt that leaves just one big job left to do set the sleeves and that can wait for a day with more brain power and now gearing up and psyching myself up for this job i am so proud of myself that the next morning i got all of this fitted fat and brained out pinned and ready for stitching plus photographs all before 10 a.m with no coffee i've been internally chewing over the whole sleeve setting and order of construction challenge quite intensely the past two days more intensely that is than my usual state of preoccupation with this very issue for very nearly a year now because now it's time to do it first it's time for that one comprehensive fitting in preparation to set sleeves so i donned my stays and did that at this point it's crucial that you fit the lining of the shoulder strap area and attach the back end of it firmly to the back bodice lining so figure out exactly where that seam needs to run don't just pin it maybe baste it if you knot the ends of your threads or otherwise make sure it can't shift on you but i went ahead and back stitched it after a specific fit check to be 100 sure this is the foundation of the fit of your shoulders the whole gown essentially hangs from this point if you proceed with anything further and then find the fit is off you'll have to come all the way back to this step and all of the sleeve head and shoulder strap construction i think it's best done in the round if you can i did a certain amount of it on the dress form but every so often i would lift the gown off and support it underneath with one hand and carefully tweak and smooth the growing layers of fabrics to ensure it would all lie as smoothly as possible so fitting the sleeves and shoulder straps is steps two to four on page 20 modified however you find works best for you if you're fitting yourself without help or get a helper for this stage this is always recommended but do not do step one just yet i'll come back to this in a minute and explain why after careful fitting on the body overstays i now have the seam lines marked for how the sleeves need to set in to fit me the bottom half of the arm's eye is standard construction right sides together back stitch along the stitch line this seam does not show on the outside for this gown you need to continue that seaming method a little further than usual at the front bring it all the way around the front arm's eye to very nearly the top of the shoulder because remember this gown doesn't have a separately fitting shoulder strap so there's essentially no junction at the front shoulder just keep stitching up now here's interesting fact number one about the sleeve heads this is step five at the top of page 21 and i hope these photos give a clear enough picture of what's going on here remember the back stitching from underneath the arm's eye goes right around to the front of the arm's eye in this photo i've drawn a red line on the photo the arrows indicate the side of the seam that sits underneath when the seam is finished and viewed from the top so all the seam allowances are pointing down the sleeve the sleeve head seam allowance is folded and the shoulder strap layers both the lining and the tartan are smooth but as you approach the top of the shoulder the seam manipulation switches over so it's the seam allowance of the sleeve head that is smooth while it's the shoulder strap that is now folded along the seam this means all the seam allowances are now pointing upwards toward your neck here's a photo from the original gown that fabric was thicker so it's even more noticeable that switch in direction and this admittedly creates a weird little bubble bubble crease at the point where this switch is over it's to be and to be honest that's one reason why it was so hard to get the finished shoulders to lie smoothly and then when you add what's going to happen at the back of the shoulder strap you've got one hot mess on your hands like stirring a pot of chili with bare fingers okay interesting fact number two and again i hope i can do justice to this in a minute i'll show you a photo from the original gown as i think the lines of the fabric are less obscured dealing with that big scale red tartan but here on mine remember when i said to skip over step one on page 20 that step has you tucking the raw edges of the shoulder strap underneath the turned and basted top edge of the bodice back pleats so that it sandwiched between the two layers of the bodice back remember those two layers the bodice back you've got a pleated top fabric and a linen lining the truth is that's a very simplified description and the truth is not so simple basically this is a four-way junction not just a stop sign i found i had to go ahead with the rest of the setting in of the sleeve and leave this junction for last this is because the sleeve doesn't just need to be slipped or shoved or scooched in between the layers of the shoulder strap but the very top corner of the sleeve head actually needs to be slipped inside the outer pleat of the back bodice yep it needs to be buried in the depths of that pleat with the outer edge of the top of that pleat running over it basically you need to start inserting that sleeve head up into the shoulder area at a lower point than the bodice strap seam i've been mulling over how to accomplish this for some time the challenge is that once you've turned over the seam allowance of the back bodice over the shoulder strap then you've got all the seam allowances blocking any possible way to slip the sleeve head in between one conclusion at this point would be to turn the sleeve head seam allowance under and fit it just like you did the front of the arms eye except sleeve heads don't work like that you need that corner or l shape right there at the junction when you fit a shoulder strap separately as a final fitting step you figure out the line your sleeve head has to take to attach to that area and then you finagle the shoulder strap whatever way seems best to cover it all over but here you can't use the shoulder strap to cover anything as it needs to go under everything else are you with me so far the two photos here are intended to help clue you in as to what you're trying to do in the next few photos i'll try and show you how i managed to do that but oh my goodness full props to lauren for trying to explain this and i'm sorry if it's not quite everything you need if you're attempting this exact construction method yourself to be fair it's not something we studied out in detail for the recreated dress and it turns out we didn't need to because we couldn't do it this way on georgia with her different shoulders so i worked out my method on the right sleeve with lots of redoing it in different ways and once i felt i'd figured it out i tried to repeat the process on the left sleeve and this time take photos start by putting a pin through the end of the shoulder strap where you know it eventually needs to be seemed over so you don't lose your final stitch line placement i originally had the seam allowance of the back bodice turned and basted but as i mentioned that effectively closes off the pleat so you can't insert anything into it so i unpicked that basting here the seam allowance is partially lifted free with the raw edges of the shoulder strap the shoulder strap resting on top the sleeve itself is folded out of the way so that i could see what i'm doing here the goal is to clear away to access the depth of that outer back pleat okay so here's the sleeve inserted into or inside that pleat on this sleeve there wasn't much to insert to be honest but it's a crucial part of the sleeve here you're still using your turned seam allowance back stitched on the inside insertion method so the sleeve has a fold once tucked up inside there the top of the sleeve head needs to be free to lie smooth with its raw edges now pointing toward the neck oh my goodness lots of futzing around getting the raw edges of the sleeve head tucked in smoothly so that the fabric of the sleeve would drape nicely at this point i'm not worrying about the shoulder strap bodice seam just let those rest while you get the sleeve head to play as nicely as you can on my right sleeve i ended up with two small pleats at the back of the sleeve head on the left because that shoulder sits higher and the shoulder strap is significantly longer yet the sleeves were cut identically the excess in the sleeve was a little less and i ended up with just one pleat okay i think this is playing nicely now to tuck the shoulder strap down over the sleeve head then fold over the back bodice top edge i'm happy with this and then i put the gown on again just a double check i hadn't somehow screwed something up in all this juggling things do move pins do fall out one thing all this really makes me appreciate is just how beautifully this junction lines up in the original gown yes there are a lot of lumps inside the shoulder straps between the tartan and the linen lining because of how sleeve heads are literally just jumbled up inside there but the seams match up on the actual setting in the sleeves i find it incredibly difficult to fit the underarm part of the sleeve on myself using the method outlined in the booklet and that's page 20 steps two to three fortunately as i'm using shapes already draped on me i was fairly confident of where the stitch lines should be so i just pinned to that line and then tried the gown on to check it here's the arms i all pinned in the red basting stitches are from way back in this project just to hold the fashion fabric and the lining together so at this stage we're ignoring them i pinned horizontally to start with mimicking the backstage that will be used but then i set in a second set of pins using the method in a video that my american duchess made last summer with lauren demonstrating the technique on the jacket that she was making to wear for the isabella event you'll find a clickable link to that video in the pdf file of this pattern on page 22 in the paragraph for step three and there's a link in the card showing right now here are the pins going in and then here's what those pins look like from the inside i then used a frixian pen to draw the arms i line basically just to connect the dots from the outer insertion points of all the pins again this is step four on page 22 drawing the arms i from the pins then back stitching the arms i again still step four page 22 and then finally i can do a final check on that alignment of the back pleat and the shoulder strap yes and now to stitch it all down step five on page 22 this is the right shoulder strap i started at the front of the shoulder strap and used a spaced back stitch up over the shoulder along the shoulder strap pausing to then also stitch down the back edge of the shoulder strap a little aside i'm not finding this step mentioned in the booklet dealing with the lining of step one on page 22 but i had already stitched that way back there for safety as i stressed for you and i can't imagine doing all the wrestling with that back shoulder junction without already having that nailed down so hmm but if you happen to do what i did and have that bit already stitched no worries you're good to go you'll just need to do the top stitching here do stitching down that line down the outer pleat of the back bodice so now all those lovely pleats are stitched and i'll just pop back inside and overcast the arm sign this is step four on page 24 i pinned the a cuff on then decided i'd better double check again where the inside of my elbow is it's a long story but my markings for the sleeves got a bit confused so i wasn't 100% sure the marking i had for this was still right the pin you can see with the red head marks the inside of my elbow for real on the sleeve so the cuff needs to be repositioned and this cuff position check highlights an area where i'm not sure we've interpreted the original gown correctly it's just a question of proportion as i think that the pieced extension to the sleeve is a bit misleading we know what happened and how and why but we may not have got the final position of the cuff in relation to isabella's own elbow right i personally think the cuff covered her elbow more centrally than what we did with georgia in which case attaching the cuff so that its topmost edge is at or even just below the elbow doesn't seem quite right but we're there now and there's no foolproof way of confirming or disproving any theories we might have about this from my own gown i have to say i would happily dispense with the sleeve extension altogether it's exactly the same width as the narrowest central part of the cuff was four and a half centimeters so with the cuff attached at its upper edge that extension is flush with the bottom edge of the cuff right at the crook of the elbow but as this is a teaching gown i'm leaving the extension on and i'm done