For mine, I used brown cotten velveteen bought at Hancock Fabrics, interlined with muslin, and lined with a dark chocolate twill.

First step, enlarging the pattern. Not as easy as enlarging the bliaut pattern pieces because of all the curves.

The typical problem I have with fitting things from Holkeboers's book: the patterns somehow aren't the right size once I enlarge them. Since this has happened twice, I'm not sure if the problem lies with my enlarging them or the patterns themselves. If they're that big on my dress form, it's going to be way too big on me with out alteration. So... ...the fun task of making the pieces smaller. First thing I did was take an inch off of the center front. Then, I pinned it onto Margaret (my dress form) and took up about four or five inches. I then drew new lines for the side seam and the small gap along the center front. The back piece was a little easier. After lining up the two points that had to match (the bottom and the underarm points on the side seam), I pinned up the excess fabric then drew new lines. After that, I took in an inch along the center back.

I then used my altered pieces to make a muslin, which got further markings. It was still too big, so I ended up taking about three inches off of each side of the center front. (I would have taken it off the back, but it was easier to fiddle with the front while I was wearing it.)

Each piece (front and two backs) was cut out of fabric three times—velvet, muslin, and twill. I flatlined the velvet with the muslin. After pinning the pieces together muslin-side out on my dress form, I attempted to draw the quilting lines on by hand so that the sides would match up when sewn together. Because of the curves at the waist and hip, this became way more more trouble than it was worth. In the end, I ended up using fusible quilter's grid with 1" squares as my guidelines. The quilting was done with gold thread up to a point just below my bustline.

To assemble the corsage, I followed the instructions for New Look #6945, the pattern I used for my Nomi Sunrider top. After sewing the shoulders of both my outer shell and the lining, I sewed them together around the armsyce, neckline, back edge, and hemline. I turned the corsage right-sdie out through the side openings (pulling the back pieces through the shoulders), then stitched the sides together. It was a bit finicky getting the sides to align—apparently the back halves were longer than the front halves—but I matched up the bottom hem as best I could. The gold bustline stitching doesn't exactly match up, but it's hidden enough by the volumn of the sleeves that it won't matter. Plus, it'll be camoflauged by trim.

Instead of lacing or using a zipper to close it, I used black hook-and-eye tape the length of the back opening.

Finding a trim I liked took what seems like forever and a day (well over a year, actually). I ended up with a gold trim from JoAnn's that had a irridescent plastic ribbon woven through it, that I had to pick out before I could use it. One band around the neckline, two around the top of the quilted section, and three along the bottom. Overall, I'm quite happy with it.