Brunswick – Almost Done! (for now)

So I am sewing madly for Williamsburg, and one of the outfits I want to bring with is my 1760s Brunswick.  Because I’m assuming it will be cold, so I want outfits that cover me up!

I’ve been working on trimming the Brunswick in fits and starts.  I’ve actually been amazed at how quickly it’s gone, but then I’ll leave it for a month, so I’ve been bad about updates.

As I mentioned in this post, I found two paintings featuring Brunswicks that I’m drawing on for the trimming pattern.  I started doing the jacket as in the first painting, but it was getting too froofy, and I had only trimmed the waistcoat and sleeves!  I left it and thought about it a lot, and finally decided to take some of the trim off of the sleeve.  Unlike most other 18th c. dress styles, Brunswicks often have at least one row of vertical trim on the sleeves; many have more.  My inspiration pic had at least three, but it was just throwing it over the edge into massive pouf-y land — and I’m not a massively poufy girl!  So I took off two of the rows on the sleeve, and then finally finished the trimming on the jacket.

I have serious plans for trimming the skirt, and have even started making a raft of ruches to do that… but given looming deadlines, I had a (slow) genius moment the other day when I realized — wait, I don’t HAVE to trim the skirt to make this outfit wearable!  Sure, it will be better with skirt trim, but it’s not REQUIRED.  I long ago cut out the skirt, sewed together panels, and hemmed it; I was waiting on pleating/attaching the waist until I had done the trimming.  But now that I’ve realized that I don’t HAVE to have that done for Williamsburg, I’m going to go ahead and finish the skirt and wear it untrimmed (for now).

Here’s the Brunswick jacket, as it was when I had lots of sleeve trim, and here is the finished jacket (minus some basting threads that need to be pulled out):