The Other Saree

As you might remember, I originally bought two sarees for my Regency dress projects but as fate would have it, I ended up making something completely different out of them. The first, yellow one became a 20s dress and I'm still very pleased with it. The second saree was (possibly) silk blend fabric, and embroidered in the traditional Indian kantha style, which is, in the lack of a better word, rather rustic. So it really didn't look like Regency dress material.
Instead, I made it into a petticoat and a caraco jacket, á la 18th century. I modified my black print jacket pattern (originally from the Costume Close-up book) and did some piecing and fiddling and managed to put together the jacket out of the more densely embroidered pallu end of the saree. The petticoat is a bog-standard 18th century skirt, nothing interesting going on there; happily I was able to cut the petticoat so that the nice embroidered border of the saree fell on the petticoat hem.
The jacket closes with three horizontal straps, each on opposite side from the others. I was inspired by the beautiful caraco in V&A and the strap-fronted pierrot in the Cut of Women's Clothes book.

The saree before cutting

Close-up of the embroidery

The middle part of the saree is really lighter than the pallu end and the edges. I've been looking at so many sarees lately that I can say with confidence that this is typical for many sarees. I'm not sure why, exactly, but there are a lot of sarees dyed like this out there. The entire jacket came out of the more densely embroidered bit. I wanted to use the border on jacket edges, which meant that I had to do some piecing to make that happen around the curving hem of the jacket. Also, I had to cut the other sleeve in two pieces to be able to cut it out of the embroidered piece.

My hand as a scale to show how big the flowers are.

I like how the jacket hem spreads out over the bumroll.

I still need to sew in hooks to attach the straps. Here they're only pinned and a bit crooked at that.

The stomacher

The jacket hem forms a complete circle when it is laid flat.

I faced the edges with leftover fabric from the inside because I didn't have enough seam allowances just to turn the lining and the jacket fabric in.

I'm not dead!

I've only been busy with studying and stuff. I have nothing to post about yet, but I'm soon hoping to finish the petticoat and caraco combination I'm making out of the other saree I bought. The saree was a vintage one, like the yellow saree, and the colour is strong reddish orange. The saree is embroidered in the traditional kantha style and I think it sort of works for 18th century styles. I'm not sure what the fabric is exactly but I would guess silk blend. But no pictures until I've finished it!

Instead, here's a couple of photos of a shawl I spruced up with block printing. The shawl is cotton, a flea market find and I hand printed the motifs with my lovely Indian block prints. So, a paisley shawl on a budget, one might say :)