Update: What has been happening?

I have been very busy archiving the textiles!  And every time I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel more textiles are found.

If the textiles are old and part of the Patterson House collection, each is numbered, a form with a description is made,  which can be very time consuming.  Then each article is packed in its acid-free tissue in an acid-free box.  Then it is added to the index which tells where everything is.

So far I have filled 20 boxes and I figure I am about 2/3 of the way done.

In the meantime, ... Remember this dress:

This is the dress I envision is possibly Clara's wedding dress when she married her second husband!  My legend, at least!  Anyhow, the silk skirt is shattering so much there is no way we can display it on a dress form.   The bodice is still in good enough shape that it could be displayed at least a couple more times, although there are a couple of small places the silk is breaking on it.

Anyhow, in order to display the bodice with a skirt, I decided to reproduce a facsimile of the original.  Of course, it is not exactly like the original because I cannot get the same fabrics, the exact colors and there is no pattern.  But it will be reasonably close.  So it is how it looks.  It doesn't hang quite right because there is no petticoats under it at this point.

I still need to add the buttons to the rosettes.

The lace is white wedding lace that I dyed with coffee after taking all the pearls and beads off.

Next is the bodice.  That is going to get VERY interesting.  It is very complicated so I am going to take my time on it since I won't need it to show off the original bodice.  I did take some pictures for reference:

First a study of the lace on the skirt.  You can see how brittle the silk is.

Then the belt, which is of lavender velvet:

And the bodice:
The lining is a fine lawn fabric and not boned.

Then there is the outside . . .

The netting is very dirty and discolored, but there would be no way of cleaning it with the silk so delicate.

Notice all the tucks in the netting 

And then there is the collar which also has tucks and is a bit ruffled.

 The back:

 You can see where the bodice back has a bit of shattering also.

The sleeves:
The sleeves are very complicated. 

The top of the Sleeve has 2 triangular shaped silk pieces, one gathered on the front and one on the back.  These pieces overlap at the center.

The netting is gathered at the armhole and at each of the places where the lavender velvet is. 

Lace finishes the sleeve.