In my first post about Edwardian combinations, I talked about a pattern drafted from the American System of Dressmaking that I hadn’t gotten to work for me. It’s been hiding in my box of projects since that time and I recently decided to finally get it done. Main reason being that I want to empty the project box, with added benefit of ending up with combinations with wider straps. The other combinations have straps that keep slipping off my shoulders which is quite annoying. So I set to work.
Front 
Back
I had the top mostly finished and was mainly stuck with attaching the leg pieces. To start, I added some buttons and buttonholes to the top.Then I sewed down the facings that I’d already made for the legs. I grabbed Tropical and started pinning some pleats into the legs that I already had. In the end, I cut a 15 cm high triangle of the top of the back leg pieces because it just wouldn’t work as drafted. Then I needed to finish the bottom of the legs and decided to grab all the cut offs from the first set of combinations and a bit of lace. I wouldn’t be able to use those for anything else and I didn’t want to throw them away. The length of the bottom ruffle was determined by the length of the bottom lace. The transitions between different sections of fabric were made using some more of the triangle insertion lace.
Lace insertion in the bottom ruffle 
Top lace
This thing was effectively one big problem solving mess. I needed to add insertion lace to the top because it was just too small, so that’s why there is some on an angle and in the back. The original pattern for the drawers created such a weird shape that I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted at all, so I had to cut bits off. I would normally gather those legs to the top, but it was easier to do pleating as I wasn’t sure where the end of the legs would even go. It took some head scratching, but I’m very glad I finally got it finished and my project box that little bit more empty.
