Sometimes things just don't work out. Sometimes NOTHING works out. This makes me very grumpy.
Dickens Day Dress? No.
New Car? No.
Sick dog? Yes.
Men's Breeches Toile for James' 18th c. suit? NO.
Ladies, let me forewarn you about JP Ryan's breeches pattern. She does some forewarning herself, right there on the pattern in fact, but stupid seamsters like me disregard that and go full-steam-ahead in confidence. In this particular case, though, I have nothing good to say. The pattern is very difficult to understand, and does not seem to follow any kind of logical construction or method. The directions are confusing, the little pictures quite cryptic, and you're just not sure if you've done it right or not until you've got the thing on a body. In this case it was my own body. Now, you can imagine that my 26-year-old girl-body is not at all like my gentleman client's man-body, yet the breeches fit me rather tightly through the legs (too tightly for James, I think), and the rear end, which I knew was going to be baggy, was more like an adult diaper. It was
phenomenally, ridiculously baggy! I do understand the purpose of the diaper-butt, but with our modern sensibilities, despite all our desires to be historically accurate, I could not with any kind of confidence present a diaper-butted pair of too-tight breeches to my client and hope he went for them!
Despair set in, then panic, then a plan. Simplicity happens to make a fairly decent 18th c. men's ensemble pattern - the Pirates of the Caribbean pattern - that has a rather nice pair of drop-front breeches included. These are what I'm going for, with some alterations to the cuffs, for instance, to make them more "Versailles," less "PIRATE." The toile should be fairly straight-forward to put together, it being Simplicity, and then puppies will be happy again and all will be well. Let's hope.
As for the rest of it...the car, particularly. Well, sometimes things just don't work out and one realizes it would be best to wait. It's best to wait, in this case. I'm sad, but it's the practical thing to do. I have an evil empire to build...then I can get my Bat-Mobile.
