peasantry, here we come

Huzzah! The overdress is complete. The pictures below should be taken with a grain of salt, as I hadn't yet finished the hem. It's only whacked off to give you the idea, so it's looking a lot the tider now. Nonetheless, here it is all hanging down:


 

And here it is "flashing" the dress engineer:


 

I really like my fabric. I can't remember whether I discussed this fabric before or not, so I'll ramble here a bit. It's this astoundingly coarse, loosely woven linen. I got it at Hancock's a year or two ago. It was about $2 a yard if I recall correctly. It was some vile color, and to be honest, I can't even remember what that is at that point because I've abused it with so many color treatments. Last year, I took it and bleached it half to death because I wanted white linen for a shirt. A few months later, I took the remainder and tried to dye it brown for a cloak. I suck with dyeing things, so I ended up with a nasty purple-brown. This was way too ugly to use, even by my standards. When I decided I wanted it for this dress, I bleached it out again, then tried dyeing it peach. This was, of course, awful as well...blindingly peachity-peach-peach. I bleached it out yet again. Then I split it in half and dyed half with not-enough dark green RIT and half with much less peach dye and a big splash of dark green. I then laundered the stuff several times. The result was these faded out dirt colors. I am sure if I were doing something fancier, I'd be devastated, but I love it for the peasant-wear. In fact, all the repeated abuse of the fabric has caused it to look just plain worn, which makes me pretty happy as well.

My overdress is, sadly, not reversible like Julie's, so it's pretty much all-booger-green, all the time. Since I had limited fabric, I dyed more than half green so I would definitely have enough for a bodice. As it turned out, I self-lined the bodice, so obviously there would have been enough to line it in the contrast. However, I think the pale orange color is pretty terrible with my coloring, so I'd probably have always worn it this way anyway.


 

I decided to drape it only part of the way back. I haven't seen a painting like this, but I really preferred the effect. I got tricksy and went ahead and stuck a coat hook-and-eye into place on each side so that I can "bustle" the dress quickly and easily. I also put a hook-and-eye closure on the partlet. I have trouble getting pins to work right.

The only things left to do are to add a ruff to the newly-exceedingly-heavily-starched partlet and to put together a little pouch, since I forgot to go back and add a pocket. Those things are cut out and awaiting some hand-stitching on the car-ride.