This Gown is The Shat

Work on the coronation gown has officially commenced! I didn't originally intend to start work on the gown just yet, but when I discovered that chupacabras had eaten the pattern for the commission I was going to work on (this is Texas, it's totally plausible), I got to work on the stomacher.
I sort of wanted to model my stomacher after the one on the 'golden' gown from Elizabeth: The Golden Age, seen to the right, so, I dove into Joann's on Saturday and rummaged around in their trim to see if I could find some sort of leafy design that looked something like what's on the Elizabeth gown. No dice. But, I did find this fluffy rose trim that I thought I could use.
You know, I thought by now that all the girls at Joann's would know that I make crazy things. But then they hire new people, and I get stuff like this:

Girl: "So, what are you making?"
Me : "An Elizabethan coronation gown, and a flight suit."
Girl: "...uh...oh. Huh." (grin sheepishly)

And that was even a fairly safe response! It's nothing like friends of mine that have to explain to the people at Home Depot was a TARDIS is, or the blank looks I get at Lowes when I buy my corset boning in their electrical section. Seriously, people, this stuff isn't that weird.

Anyway, I cut the trim up so I could fiddle with the individual roses, and I ended up with a giant pile of little fabric roses. I had put a layer of this pretty lace that I had bought at the fabric store as an overlay on the stomacher, to act as a backdrop for whatever decoration that I was going to add on. Then, I decided to paint some of it gold. So, all the really white parts gold a layer of liquid leaf on them. Then, I decided that the roses should also be gold. I hit them with the spray paint.

I futzed around with the dress pieces for a while, pinned everything together, and then attacked my stomacher with roses and hot glue. Yes, this gown is totally going to be historically accurate. In fact, back in The Day, hot glue guns were actually carved out of a single block of wood and had almost no moving parts, and they were heated by a manservant running on a treadmill while the tailor glued roses onto gowns. There were, of course, a lot of fires from these wooden glue guns, and one was, in fact, the cause of the great fire of 1666. True story.

Anyway, 10,000 pins and two sticks of glue later, I went to bed, with the dress in this condition. I probably won't work on it again for a week or so, as classes start back up tomorrow (Yay! No, really, yay!) and I have to finish those commissions.
Also, Thursday is my birthday! I have shenanigans planned all weekend long, which may include me jumping out of a plane. We'll see, I'm still kinda broke from Vegas.

Oh! Speaking of Vegas! Guess what:



Yeah! That's me and The Shat! (And one of The Australians, but you don't know him.) Shatner is even smiling, which almost never happens in photos with him, but it's probably because Goldie was wearing a tiny silver bikini and was still in the process of walking away. Hehe! But yeah. Awesome.