I talked with Etaine this weekend. She said that instead of making a corset (which is probably wrong for this dress style) and then fitting a dress over that corset I should instead make the dress and bone the front opening. That makes the dress much easier. I’m thinking run bone along the front edges. Whip lacing rings directly under the boning. Add additional boning if necessary to keep boob-age from leaking into underarms. Use hook and eye to attach front decorated and re-inforced placket to support boobage. So this is essentially like my italian dresses except that the boob will be supported by the decorated placket and the black lacings will run across the stomach, holding the bottom of the dress tight (under the boobs). Much easier than previous plan.
I’m hoping the wool comes this week. I want to make the bodice out of two layers of linen and use that to hold the boning and lacing rings. Then the wool will attach to the outside sort of decoratively. All the strength will come from the linen. I’m pretty sure I have some lovely dark-chocolate linen that would be perfect for this.
I can’t make the decorative placket until I receive the brown wool. I want to make sure that the colors work well together.
Hmmm.. option 2 is to make dress from linen and skip the wool part. That idea has potential. I have black velvet ribbons I used on italian dress. That would easily work on german dress. This idea bears thinking about.