Ruth DBK Boarding Suit: Soutache Sewing is Complete!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huzzah!!  SQUEE!!!!  Whoot Whoot!!  Laaaaaaaaaaa!!!  I'm Soooo Heppy!!!!  

Ok, I guess you can tell by my excited out burst that the soutache has all been sewn onto the Ruth boarding suit!!  Truly, I am so happy!  Tracy Gomez came through for me again and found some more soutache for me so I could complete the coat to the suit (thank you soooooo much Tracy!!!!!).  Needless to say, my fingers are more than thrilled with this develompent!!  

The collar was also sewn on.  I am not 100% pleased with it, but I keep telling myself that it can't be exactly like the original as I don't have the pattern from the original.  So, I have decided that it will do just fine!!

Hopefully tomorrow I will put in the lining, add the sleeves and maybe cut out the skirt!  Hurray!!!!  Yes, I know I am being optimisitic!!!

Sorry for the lousy pictures as I used my phone and it wasn't wanting to cooperate this morning...

Bring on the lining!!!

Be Blessed my friends!!

g

Getting Ever So Much Closer to the End!!

So far so good as of late!  No grumbling whilst tearing out stitches!  Huzzah!!!  Just a lot of hand stitching down of squiggles!  That I can totally handle!  The going is slow, but I am really liking the end result!

What it looks like before I stitch all the soutache down...a HUGE green wool pin cushion!  My husband thinks I'm crazy!

The center front is complete!  Huzzah!!!

The side panel is pinned on.  Praying that my friend Tracy can locate more soutache like this so I can complete the coat with like soutache...I ran out!  waaaaahahahahahahaha!!!!

Really happy with the back.  Playing around with the velvet covered buttons...I think I will move them on the final step.

Now I'm just waiting to hear if the same soutache has been re-ordered from the place where Tracy found the first stuff.  If not, I have a very close color that I can use...Here's hoping!!

Be Blessed my friends!

g

Ruth DWB Boarding Suit Progress

(Deep breath...deeeeeeep breath)  Hello there lovely readers!  I have a progress report on my RDWB boarding suit.  You know, one day I am going to say, "I hope that 100 things go wrong on this dress!"  Because maybe then NOTHING will go wrong on a dress!  hahahahahahahaha!!!  It has taken quite a bit to be able to show you this progress.  Wednesday I spent all day (8 hours) sewing the straight, outline lines of soutache onto the coat.  I got them all done in a time that took forever and discovered that there were puckers and buckles along the soutache and on the wool.  It was then that I realized that wool does not take kindly to pulling and tugging.  So, this is my warning to anyone who will work with wool in the future....DO NOT PULL OR TUG ON WOOL!!!  IT WILL THROW A FIT!!!  I decided, in my deluded, lazy mind that I could get away with just laying the soutache on the wool with out hand tacking it down first if I sewed really slowly.  WRONG!!!  After going to bed and trying to talk my OCD mind into going to sleep and failing miserably, I got back out of bed and ripped out stitched soutache until 2 in the morning.  I then woke up on Thursday and after getting everyone off to their respective schools/work, set about ripping out the rest of the soutache.  GAAAAAA!!!!!  

Well, I have since hand tacked all of the outline lines then machine stitched them down and have started on the squiggles.  My fingers hate me.

Front panel of squiggles

The front squiggles I was able to machine stitch after hand tacking them down.  There was minimum warping that I was able to remove with ironing!! 

The back is looking pretty good!

While I was able to machine stitch the front squiggles, I am having to hand sew the back squiggles down.  There was too much warping going on when I used the sewing machine!

More squiggles to come!

Be Blessed my lovely friends!

g

Ruth DWB's Green Boarding Suit: Part 2

This past Sunday through Wednesday, Mom and I went to Spokane to visit my brother and his family and had a fabulous time!  We celebrated my niece's birthday and had lots of fun with her and my nephew!  Then there was the usual binging on food and visiting kid friendly sites like the park.  We were also able to get in a few fabulous anitques shops...and found some neat-o finds!  And OHMYGOSH some silk tulle at a fabulous fabric store that we had been driving by for years.  I finally stopped in to see if they had any soutache, they did not, but found real silk tulle!!!!!  I am so deliriously happy about it!!!  But I digress...

This post is about the progress on the RDWB green wool suit.  I was finally able to cut out the wool after doing the mock up and getting it to where I liked it.  I had some issues with the collar as the patterns I am using didn't have anything suitable that would match the original.  And of course I need to mention the package I got in the mail on Thursday.  I had asked my friend Tracy Gomes (Lady Fleur as I knew her a long time ago) if she had a source for Olive green soutache.  She said she was going to LA "this weekend" and would check for me.  While I was in Spokane, I got a message from Tracy saying to check my mail on Wednesday!  Joy!!  I was going to see samples of soutaches that would possibly work for my outfit!  Well, the package came on Thursday and OHMYGOSH!!  Tracy bought a ton of soutache for me!  In almost the exact shade...I had to coffee dye it 2 times to get it a deeper color, but SQUEE!!!  It totally works!!!  Thank you so much Tracy!!!

Yesterday and today, my OCD took over and I didn't stop sewing until I had both sleeves done.  I think that I just needed to see if everything would work well together and to get down the rounded zig zags that go in between the straight strips of soutache.  Laaaaaa!!!!  I am quite happy with how they sleeves turned out!!  My neck, hands, arms and back are not so thrilled, but my creative brain is super happy!

Ruth's dress...check out all that soutache in on the sleeves....
Photo courtesy:  moviescreencaps.come

My sleeves...I hate the way this fabric and soutache photograph...sometimes it has a blue cast...grrrrrrrrrrr

Velvet strip

I love the way the designer of this outfit used such different shades of green...very era correct..

Fun corner soutache.

It took me forever to do two sleeves...I am fearful of the rest of the miles of soutache I have left to apply to the dress!  But it will get done and I will forget in time what a pain it was to sew it all on!

Next up....sewing the body of the coat together...

Blessings!

g

Ruth DeWitt Bukater's Green Boarding Suit: Part 1

Aaaaaahhhh....green.  And wool.  And velvet.  And Soutache.  And 1912.  And Titanic.  And Ruth DeWitt Bukater.

What do these things all have in common?  Ruth's FABULOUS green boarding suit!  My heart does a most wonderful hiccup when I watch this scene from Titanic.  I understand that for most people, the heart hiccup comes when they see Rose step out of that aweomse car, all resplendent in her pinstripe suit and gynormous hat.  But for me again, it is the outfit that Ruth is wearing.  First of all, my favorite color is green.  Secondly, hello totally off color green velvet and soutache!  Then there is the pheasant feather toque and hand muff!  Le Swoon and Le Sigh!!

I have determined to make this whole outfit for the Titanic Event at The HasBrouck House at the end of April (yes, even the toque and hand muff.).  I would quite honestly love to recreate all of Ruth's fabulous wardrobe, and I may just have to do that when it is all said and done.  For now though, I'll content myself with her green boarding suit.  

I scoured the internet trying to find images of her fabulous outfit and found this site:

Movie-Screencaps.com

My word they have a ton of fabulous screencaps!  I found several that highlighted the details on Ruth's suit perfectly.  I believe I am going to have to order about 1,000 yards of soutache to get this baby complete!  Thankfully I already have the almost exact shade of wool and velvet!  Whoot whoot!!

Frances Fisher is so beautiful and I think was perfect in her role as Ruth.

Lovely sweep of Ruth's coat and skirt.

I believe I see some buttons on the back!

The back of the coat has a very interesting cut.  The sides are shorter than the back center.

Oooooh!  More buttons!

This angle shows that she is wearing ivory boots and how wide the circumference of her skirt is!

This picture creates the illusion of her being almost angelic!  Hhhhmmmm....

Fun positioning of the soutache on the sleeve.  See where it meets the soutache on the bodice of the coat?  Awesome!

A.  Look at the size of that hand muff!  B.  I see more buttons on the front of the coat!  Laaaaaaa!!!

Nice close-up of the blouse beneath her coat.  LOVE her hair!

Image of the front of her coat.  Unfortunately the source where I found this no longer exists...

A fuzzy close-up of the soutache trim and the velvet piece on the sleeve.

For my outfit, I have chosen to use two patterns for the coat:

The general lines of Simplicity 2581 are perfect for the coat.  It is a bit long on me (I have been working on the mock-up) but that can be fixed easily.  The sleeves are even perfect!

I did, however combine the front and side front pattern piece from Vogue 8346 and the Simplicity pattern because of the lines on the green coat.  The seam ended at the armhole, not the shoulder seam.

I'm still undecided on what skirt pattern I will use.  It will all depend on how much fabric I have after I get the coat cut out!

My fabric that doesn't photograph well... :-(

My fabric!  Unfortunately, it doesn't photograph nicely.  It is pretty spot on in real life!

I am really excited about this project...not so much about the sewing on of all that soutache, but I think this will be a very satisfying project!

Blessings!

g