Working on the En Forreau Gown

Today, I had a chance to sew on the En Forreau gown, but only after I had completely removed all the carpet from my living room floor.  Jim and I have been redoing most of the floors in our 110 year old house, and are so excited to be almost through with this project.  We have had to replace the subfloor and install vinyl flooring in the dining room, master bedroom, and the office, but were fairly sure that we would only have to install an underlayment for the vinyl flooring that we are installing in the living room and another bedroom.  The bedroom has a pine floor that has been painted, but otherwise is in great structural shape, so we will simply install the underlayment and vinyl flooring to this room.

We were so pleasantly surprised to discover that after we removed the old carpet in the living room that the original pine flooring was in wonderful condition.  We never anticipated being able to preserve some of the original flooring in the house, but now we will be able to do so.  Here is a picture of the floor as we found it after removing the old carpet.

Now back to my sewing project.  I had completed the two sections of the En Forreau 1700s gown, and today I pleated and inserted the en forreau back of the gown.  Remember, that the term en forreau refers to the way the back of the gown is made up of a long pleated section that starts at the neckline and extends to the hem of the skirt. This feature of the gown allows it to be fitted in the waist by adding tiny little pleats.  I'm not going to say, that this phase of the project was completed without me having to rip out some stitches, because I would not be telling the truth.  Hopefully, when I make a second gown by this pattern, I will be able to breeze through it.  Here are pictures of the pleated back section of the gown and where it was inserted.

And these last two pictures show little Mattie having her second fitting.  I placed the petticoat fabric against the gown to get an idea of how the colors will look together.  What do you think?