This next winter outfit for Brigitte was my Couching Competency for the Athena’s Thimble Historical Needlework Guild. The fabric was an ivory damask bought and given to me by a woman who wanted me to make her a wedding gown, and then she broke up with the fiance and told me to keep the fabric.

Since this was meant to be worn in the winter, especially for outside events, I made a partlet of a scrap of ivory velveteen, and couched half loops on it.

The partlet was lined with a cut-up white rabbit-fur jacket I trashpicked. It had enough decent pieces of fur on it to trim the dress.

A view of the partlet from the back. It ties under the arms with ribbons, and kept her neck and shoulders very warm.

…And a cute shot from above, to show the fancy hat with the feathers as well.

I couched half loops and brick stitch on the bodice as well.

Here’s the dress without the partlet. All the gold brocade was from that Sally Ann table runner we got for $3, mentioned in the last post. We used some of the white fur coat bits to line the lower outer sleeves. The lower inner sleeves were made to be removable, but I ended up tacking them in place as they tended to come untied and come down.

Couching work on the upper sleeves.

A closeup on the couched loops and brick stitch. This is not “German brick stitch” which is a canvaswork technique, it’s couching brick stitch, which is easy and very neat-looking.

Here’s the brustfleck, where I couched a pattern from Hans Hofer’s Formbuchlein. I don’t know if any of the patterns in there with what looks like interwoven strands was ever meant to be couched or just embroidered, but they lend themselves wonderfully to couching.

In addition, I made her a snood to go with the outfit, and learned how to do herringbone stitch on it. This was my Athena’s Thimble competency in needle lace – it’s really not a technique I know at all, but I went to a class on herringbone lace insertion, and was able to follow enough to make some, and then practiced on this snood. It’s a bit wrinkled, but hopefully you can make out the stitching.

I put a gold thread down the middle of the herringbone lace, and put in some chain stitch to hold the edges in place.

And here is a picture of Brigitte from back when the dress was first made, on her way to Crown Tourney! She said that she felt very snug in her fur-lined partlet and sleeves, and felt sorry for all the women in Middle Eastern garb wandering around shivering.