Well, I got this dress done JUST in the nick of time – 10:00pm the night before I left to go back to school! I tried to be super industrious this time and take lots of photos of the construction, but I still didn’t manage to fully document the process. Here are some of the highlights.
Here’s the inside of the back section of the skirt. It’s cartridge pleated, but has an unusual method of finishing the top edge. I whipstitched the binding onto the front part of the skirt, folded it over and whipstitched again on the back. 
The front of the bunad is is pleated. Transitioning from cartridge pleats to knife pleats posed a challenge. I kept the folded over edge, backstitched the binding and then folded it over and stitched it in the back.
To attach the skirt to the bodice, I whipstitched the very base of the binding to the base of the bodice. Then, I backstitched through the bodice into the back of the skirt binding to keep everything nice and secure. It’s the third time I’ve tried to attach a skirt and bodice with this method of skirt binding, and I think I’ve finally mastered it this time.
The skirt hem is padded with two layers of wool flannel that were hand basted then machine quilted, and then a decorative layer applied – a band of red, a band of black, a band of red and then green piping. This was hand applied to the skirt and then the bottom bound in black wool.
Here’s the back of the hem – the facing is backstitched for security. I didn’t want it to get accidentally stepped out while dancing.
Here’s the finished back of the bunad. I don’t have a picture of the full bunad, sadly, but you can see some of the neat details here – it’s backstitched around each edge of the bodice. The original Amli bunads have really cool binding on all the edges and ribbon trim on the back, but those are REALLY hard to get outside of Norway.
The front has kind of a cool dog legged closure. My client really wanted to be able to wear it without an apron if at all possible, so I worked in a way to do it. A card woven belt is worn over at the waistline.
And last but not least, here are some sketches I did of what the finished bunad will look like on. I’ve done digital painting on and off, and it was fun to get back into it again!
And with the apron . . . using a jacquard from Duran Textiles, which is where my client is planning on getting apron fabric from sometime in the future. You can see that fabric below - 
Sometime in the near future I hope to put together a post on resource on making bunads from Amli. There’s not that much out there in English, and translating costume information from Norwegian is quite frustrating! However, I was able to dig up some good resources that I’d like to put together for others who might want to make this bunad.
It is often suggested that the bunads be made from kits…
Yes, that is true but a) I can’t afford to make bunads from kits b) kits usually are related to bunads that are embroidered, and I don’t embroider and c) there aren’t any kits available for this bunad, even in Norway.