Hey, I finished something! Even better, this albatross!
Of course, I was up pretty late the nights before I wore this in order to get it done. I widened the center front and reattached the trim, only to realize that it was STILL too narrow. Ain’t nothing like doing it the hard way!
For lacing rings, I didn’t have time to get some real soldered rings, so I headed off to the hardware store and looked at random bits and bobs until I found some small-ish keyrings — hey, they worked!
I had one small issue when I put the gold ball trim on the CF, which is that I got to finish putting on the trim and realized I had about a half-ball-width hole, so I had to decide between a slight gap or trying to squeeze one more ball in. I ended up squeezing one more in, which meant that the trim in front ended up looking kind of wonky.
I ran out of time to do anything useful with the champagne label, so I had to safety pin it on. Looking back, I should have basted it on in the car, because it looks a little bit lame. But oh well!
Last thing, I didn’t want to wear my hat until we got to fair because it was raining, and I hadn’t really planned out my hair. So while I pictured wearing the hat on the top/side of my head, the only thing I could find to attach a hat pin too was way back/side — so I ended up looking pretty frowzy hat-wise, but everyone agreed that it was appropriate for a champagne bottle!
It’s not my best work, but it’s a whole lot better than the first try, and it was fun (and practical) to wear! I had a great time at the fair, running into all sorts of friends wearing fabulous costumes and having a lovely tea. Oh, and most everyone got the costume, which was a good thing!
Me and Tara, who went in a beautiful bee-themed fancy dress ensemble.
So what’s next? A whole lot of 18th century, but that’s another post!
A couple of different bloggers have posted some great ideas for holiday gifts for the costumer, and I thought I’d join in. Here are some ideas of things to get for fellow costumers, or to add to your own wishlist!
Reproduction Civil War Bonnets & Jewelry
My friends Bridget and Lana are very talented costumers who are way into the Civil War era. Their shop, North & South Emporium, is an Etsy shop that features gorgeous, historically accurate bonnets and jewelry. All of their stuff would be perfect for Dickens era as well!
Black velveteen mid-Victorian bonnet $225 | North & South Emporium
High Quality Fabrics for Historical Costuming
These days, it can be hard to find high quality fabrics for historical costuming. My friend Diana runs Renaissance Fabrics, which carries really nice silks, wools, cottons, trims, and more. None of those lightweight “taffetas” which really are more crepe de chine — if Diana sells it, it’s a good quality item.
Right now, she’s running a promotion: enter “holiday2012” to receive 10% off any order you place between now and December 31st.
She’s even started having some fabric custom woven. Two of these that I love:
Gold silk organza stripe $22/yd | Renaissance FabricsDark red & ivory silk taffeta -- also available in blue & green $20/yd | Renaissance Fabrics
Smithsonian Museum Reproduction Jewelry
QVC and Smithsonian have partnered to recreate some of the jewelry in the Smithsonian’s collections. They’ve made a reproduction of a pair of Marie Antoinette’s earrings — I own them and they are STUNNING — and although sadly they are now no longer available, you can get the same piece as a necklace:
Marie Antoinette earring necklace $47.64 | QVC
Books!
It’s not a costume wishlist without books! Sadly there’s no big whopper costume museum books that you haven’t already heard about a million times, so I thought I’d recommend some slightly less obvious options:
Sometimes we forget that the cultural history of fashion is as important and fascinating as the clothing that we make! Two books I’d like to recommend to costumers who are interested in the eighteenth century are The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America and Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791. In particular, Fabricating Women has an amazing amount of information on who made clothing in 18th c. France, and how it was made.
The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America $39.95 | Amazon.comFabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 $28.45 | Amazon.com
Nancy Nehring has put out some really great books on trims and details. One in particular, 50 Heirloom Buttons to Make, is really helpful in showing you how to make historical buttons, such as death’s head buttons. It’s been out of print for a while and because it’s highly sought after, it’s pretty expensive, but an inexpensive Kindle version has just come out!
50 Heirloom Buttons to Make $9.99 | Amazon.com
While there aren’t too many museum books that are new and exciting, the V&A has recently put out Muslin, which covers the history of the fabric and draws on many items from their collection.
Muslin $39.49 | Amazon.com
DVD on Carnevale in Venice
Who doesn’t want to go to Venetian carnevale? Well, me for a long time, since I pictured hordes and hordes of crowds in chintzy costumes. Seeing T&T’s Real Travels DVD of carnevale has totally changed my mind! One-half of T&T is fellow costumer Trystan, and she and her husband filmed their trip a few years back to Venice during carnevale. Contrary to what I expected, it looks totally amazing — they captured many many gorgeous costumes, trolled through one of the best costume shops in Venice, and documented the creme de la creme of costume events, the Ballo del Doge. You can really get an idea of what it would be like to take a costumer trip to Venice during carnevale, and even if you can’t go yourself, it’s pretty lovely armchair travel.
T&T's Real Travels in Venetian Carnevale $19.99 - $29.99
Random stuff from Me!
Of course, I can’t help but plug my own Etsy shop, in which I sell vintage patterns and bits and bobs that I’ve realized I’m never going to use. Here’s a few interesting and cheap items that might interest someone:
Vintage 1950's Blouse and Slim Slacks Pattern $8 | Demodecouture on EtsyVintage Feather Appliques or Millinery Trim $15 | Demodecouture on EtsyAntique Victorian Fashion Plate - Les Modes Parisiennes, 1860s $10 | Demodecouture on Etsy
I’ve been sewing away on the champagne costume and am nearly there. I managed to get the sleeves and trim on the bodice, add the gold netting to the neckline, and make the gold netting underplacket. I’ve been wibbling about how to close things — I want to do whatever is lazy and easy, but none of my options seem to be either! I want the LOOK of a laced bodice as in the original fashion plate — I like the contrast of the ribbon on the netting. I kept thinking about ways to fake it, but they seemed harder than just sewing lacing rings on the damn thing. Only problem is I only have 6 lacing rings on hand, so I decided to try using some of the flat sides of grommets as well — essentially works, but they are wide, and long story short I had to take them all off anyway, so I may hit the hardware store tonight and see if I can find some other kind of substitute.
Here’s the crappy late night cameraphone try-on pics, in which you can see my problem (other than the one lacing ring that snapped off, hence the wonky lacing) — it’s too big! Not if I close it all the way, but I was conservative in how much I cut out of the front to make the lacing gap, because nothing is worse than thinking you want an X wide gap and then you try it on and that X has doubled, but the thing closes edge to edge. I tried lacing it a little bit loosely, especially on the top half, just to see the effect of the netting and lacing, then in a fit of craziness took off the gold balls along the front edge, cut off a bit more from the CF, and resewed it all (all while watching “Sparkle,” which I can report is pretty shlock-tastic).
Front, a little wonky because of the too-big issue!Le side!Back, looking a little limp below the waist b/c of no bustle/skirts.
Also, the cats report that Mom wandering the house with a really long ribbon trailing from her bodice = GOOD TIMES.
The sleeves took a couple of tries just to figure out what I was going to do. Originally I thought whatever I’d use as the gold netting would be the sleeve too, as in the fashion plate, but after scouring Joann’s I couldn’t find anything in the right shade. I’m weird, but I love the caramel-y gold color of the taffeta I’m using for the hat, and all of the nettings I could find were either too yellow-gold or too brown or not sparkly. Whatever, Joann’s! And here I thought you were a bastion of sparkly synthetic craptastic fabric. I even checked the casa collection aisle, which was terrifying!
So first I decided to make the sleeves in the same gold taffeta as the hat, and even got so far as patterning the same shape from the fashion plate (narrow cap, wide hem) and hemming it, only to discover that my armscye was WAY bigger than my sleeve sloper’s armscye. As I was pondering my options, I was worrying about having a dark green dress with random gold sleeves, and hit on the idea of doing an overlapping tulip sleeve in the few scraps of the green velvet that I had left, and then trimming it with Yet More Gold Balls.
So, what’s left: find more lacing rings, sew those on, add one more row of gold ball trim to the skirt, widen the skirt waistband about .5″, and throw together a necklace out of yet more gold balls. Oh, and figure out how I’m attaching the champagne label — I think I’ll just tack it to the underskirt and call it done!
“Pulling teeth,” because that’s what writing this blog post has become. Gah! It was another busy fall semester with little sewing, and I’ve gotten out of the habit of blogging. I have been noodling on my embroidered fichu, but I’m not going to bore you with “embroidered another flower” posts.
This Saturday I’m heading to the Dickens Fair in San Francisco to see friends and for GBACG day. I was waffling on whether or not to go, because I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to wear… mid-Victorian is just a total butterchurn-y snoozefest to me. Bonnets! High necklines! Giant sleeves! Giant skirts! I feel like it’s all too much, and as a tall girl with a lot of padding, the last thing I need is to add more pouf in all directions. But when I remembered the Champagne project and what I initially WANTED it to be (not what it ended up as), I got a little more into it.
Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on what didn’t work (besides the lack of trim) a few months back. I took your suggestions and basically took the whole thing apart… ditched the bodice, took the skirt apart. So here’s the new plan:
First, I’m going back to the original fashion plate inspiration, which is just so perfect for turning into a “champagne” costume:
Original fashion plate inspiration.
I decided to make the whole dress out of dark green velvet, and keep the gold/foil/cork part for my head. So I took off all that lighter green silk on the skirt and replaced it with green velvet. Only problem was, I had some dark green velvet in my stash, but it was a yellower green than the blue/green I’d used for the original skirt pieces. I decided to try overdyeing the stash fabric with a bit of blue, and to my amazement it came out to a perfect match, so off I went merrily… until I tried taking a picture of the pile-o-velvet that is the bodice and skirt and the colors are coming out totally differently. I swear to god, they match 99% in real life… knowing my luck, all pictures taken of me will totally show the different velvet colors. Sigh.
The pile-o-velvet that is the finished skirt and almost finished bodice. In real life, the velvet colors match. Sigh.
So the plan is to follow the fashion plate and trim the bodice and skirt with some kind of gold ball trim to evoke the idea of champagne bubbles. Last year I searched and wibbled and prevaricated and never ended up finding a trim I liked. This time, I managed to find some cheap xmas garlands at my local hardware store (after scouring the craft store — weird!) and am Just Going With It.
Gold ball christmas garlands.Pulling them apart to make trim.
I’m going to string them (on wire, I guess?) and sew them on to many of the edges. I’m also planning to put some gold netting in the center front of the bodice and around the neckline, again hoping to evoke foil and champagne bubbles. We’ll see! It works in my head.
I want my head to be cork/foil part, so I bought a mini-top hat frame off of Jenn to recover. Because I realized after the last try that I need to be Really Obvious for this costume to work, after I covered the hat in pretty gold silk taffeta, I fabric-glued champagne corks all around the brim:
Mini top hat frame.The covered and be-corked hat.
All of this brings me to… most of the time I’ve been a costumer, I’ve been a relative purist about historical accuracy. Oh sure, on some costumes I may cut some corners, and I’m pretty religious about wearing some kind of makeup with costumes for the last few years, but I’ve never wanted to make totally non-historical stuff. Something about making the Marie Antoinette dress this summer has changed that, and that and the Pierrot/maja costume have been the most fun things I’ve worn in a long time! Suddenly doing (most) straight historical costumes is seeming boring, and I’m finding myself wondering what I can add to costumes to put them over the top. This is new and weird!
To that end, I bought a bunch of gold makeup that I plan on using this weekend, plus I’m contemplating crazy hair (it seems like champagne hair should be curly and frizzy and UP, am I right? I’m thinking about getting my Helena Bonham Carter on — what do you think?).
This TV series, created by French & Saunders (a famous British comedy team; you probably know Jennifer Saunders from Absolutely Fabulous) is COMPLETELY HILARIOUS. It’s set at Versailles in 1782, and Saunders plays the Comtesse de Vache (Countess of Cow), an AbFab version of an aristocrat who spars with her witty maid (Dawn French), hairdresser, and rival Madame de Plonge. If you like historical humor, you will love this. If you like AbFab, you will love this. Nothing makes me howl as much as the opening 6 minutes of the episode “Murder,” when the Comtesse’s attendants leave her alone for two days, and she’s unable to get out of bed because — well, she’s an aristocrat! She can’t get herSELF out of bed!
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Berrington plays a Queenie version of Marie Antoinette, complete with ridiculous Austrian accent.
The costumes are definitely theatrical: I think all of the dresses have fitted backs, some of which are incongruous with the rest of the dress; some of the fabrics are weird; and there are some non-18th c. aesthetics, like skirts of a different color than the bodice. That being said, I really quite liked many of the costumes! The wigs are great, it LOOKS like they used silk for many of the dresses, and sometimes a character will step out in something that will make you say, “Wow, I think they based that on a real historical garment!” See Marie Antoinette’s dress below, and the Comtesse de Vache’s blue & white jacket ensemble (okay the pockets are weird, but otherwise, I quite like it!).
I can’t recommend this highly enough!
My review: 5 (out of 5)
If you like this era, you might also want to check my 18th C. Costume Movie Reviews. For more silly takes on history, check out Casanova (the David Tennant version), Lost in Austen (2008), and The Young Visiters (2004).
