Finished the povoinik

And yes, it is not a particularly attractive piece of clothing. That's alright though. It was never intended to be worn alone. Not even at home. There were to always be a couple of additional layers worn with it for casual wear and lots and lots more for doing things like leaving the house. The decoration at the forehead might peek out from under them, hence its focus, but mostly it was just supposed to be a tight little cap to keep the dangerous hair of a Russian woman contained.

I used a few more of the little flowers and I'm really pleased with the mirrors and beads and gold. I'm laying a solid foundation of bling to build upon. I think there are enough of the flowers with the bugle bead flourishes to embellish the rectangular flap that attaches to the back of this. Then I plan to use some of the plain flowers and perhaps some of the larger pieces to embellish the ubrus (sort of a heavy veil-- the word means towel.)

The new Italian/Lotto gown is going pretty well. I sewed most of the boning channels for the bodice late last night and plan to finish the rest up tonight after my kids are asleep and I can get downstairs to the sewing machines. I still haven't gotten around to making a corset yet, so this will have interior boning like the Camilla dress. If I didn't have my shape I could probably get away without it, since there are definite wrinkles at the waist of the painting, but I need shaping and support. I'm going to "bone" with hemp cording, however, in order to give it a softer shape. I plan to add a layer or so of wool felt to smooth the bones out and as a substitute for the fur lining that I'm forgoing. The bodice will have 6 layers like the last one since it seemed to work pretty well. I added a little extra allowance to allow for the cording. Right now the bodice is too large. Hopefully threading the cording in will solve that problem. Guess we'll see how that goes some time tonight.