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Hustle and Bustle
The first thing I need for my Steampunk Winter Belle dress is a bustle. I've chosen an early bustle era design, early 1870's, so I picked this pattern from Truly Victorian.
And following a recent tradition, my historical foundation garments again feature the Eiffel tower, even though it didn't exist yet.
As I'm not particularly tall, Bubbles kindly helped me shorten the pattern an inch all of the way around
Because it was such a fun patterned fabric, I decided to try my hand at pattern matching. As long as you don't zoom in too far on this picture of my completed skirt front, I think I did pretty well. :)
Boning casings were applied to both the front and back of the skirt back, and now it's time for the ruffles.
Here are the cut pieces for my entire skirt, as well as all of the organdy ruffles.
I'm very pleased with the way the trim came together on this project. I think the yellow, along with the fabric, makes it a very fun and happy piece to wear.
Ruffle, ruffle, ruffle. This is where I ran into issues, caused by my inability to count. I planned to take the option in the fabric to extend the bottom ruffle all of the way around the skirt. First, I miscalculated exactly how much extra ruffle that would entail by assuming my front pieces all were twice as big as they actually are. Oops. Then, that extended ruffle, which covers the hem and boning casing, is supposed to go on last. I sewed all six of these ruffles on thinking I had saved one for last, only to realize there were only six total ruffles. Another oops.
But, I figured it out, and, I'm proud to say, with minimal unpicking.
My next snag was also a bottom ruffle problem. The sides of the ruffles cascading down the back of this bustle are all supposed to be caught into the side seam. But since all proper ruffles overlap, I couldn't get the bottom ruffle (and the boning casing it covers) out from under the ruffle above them. I had to unpick the ruffle trim and hem for a few inches on each side, and taper that ruffle up so that by the time it hit the side hem it was no longer in my way. Then I could safely catch all of the other ruffles into the seam.
Insert the boning into the casing, and poof, we have a bustle. Modern cheat: I added two small elastic insets to the waistband for a little extra give- though not so much I might lose my skirt! :)
