Fern Stomacher

After months of sitting, the stomacher is finally finished. I worked on it over a long weekend at Mom's house, and decided to go with light gold for the left fern. I'm not sure if I love the finished product, but I'm happy with the embroidery.

I tried adding darker threads to the gold stem, but the stitching is so close it was not possible, even with a 2 strand thread. Pulling that out was difficult without damaging the existing embroidery.

I finished embroidering about a month ago, and the material sat on my sewing table getting things piled on top of it, and being ignored until tonight when I decided to finish it off. It took about 5 minutes.

It is made of a linen cotton blend, lined with the same material. The stiff interlining is a heavy drill cloth (light green) that will never show, but will keep the stomacher from wrinkling. I could still add tabs, hooks / eyes or back-side lacing loops. Or I could leave it as a free-standing garment to be laced in.

The little white thing in the third leaf up is a stray thread. There are gaps in the embroidery where I wanted the leaves to look split. Again, I'm not sure how much I love that idea.

The next project I work on will be more realistic, and much more traditional. I hadn't intended this to be super-historic, but now that I've made one, I am looking forward to making another, much more historically correct design. I think I'll work on white linen or silk next time.

I may add a bottom and side section (see 18th c. stomacher post below for original). It will depend on what garment this ends up with. One of my upcoming projects is a Sacque back gown, or an open gown, which this could be worn with. I'm very much in favor of the sacque, but I would be limited as to where I could wear it.... which saddens me. I need to find a group that likes to dress up instead of dressing down.