Author: kendra

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Fixing the Fit

It’s taken me a while to pick this back up again, even when I knew I only had to do a relatively easy fix.  Lethargy and CADD are to blame!  If you’ll recall, I’d put the basic dress together and all the lacing holes, and had Scary Mooshy Boob.  I let out the CF lacing as far as necessary to achieve Relatively Normal Boob, then put a piece of paper over me and traced the opening shape.  Then I cut that in half, and made a pattern for a small gusset to go in the side seam.  I put that in and it seems to have MOSTLY dealt with the problem, so since this dress is all about being good enough for government work, that’s done!  I am getting some horizontal wrinkles around my waist, particularly in back, but I’ve decided I’m just going to live with that.  I’ve got one front gusset that’s pulling — I did resew it, trying to create a bit more seam allowance, but it’s pulled again.  Harumph.  I will have to rip out the top of that gusset and try some fray block or something!

I also took some scary flash photos of the full length of the dress, just so you could see the skirt.

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The Basic Hat Is Done!

I did realize that I forgot to glue crin tape on the edges, over the millinery wire.  oops!  I realized this after I’d mulled and put on the fabric cover, so no going back now!  Luckily I can’t see any rough edges, so I’m hoping it won’t matter.

Now I’ve got to decide on trim — it looks like a lot of these stripey huge hats only have a bit of flowers on them (makes sense, as visually it’s very loud).  But I do still like the contrast with the green ribbon on the red & white stripey hat fashion plate, so I’m going to poke around and see if I can find something that will work.  Solid, definitely, as this is already pretty over the top!

Also, I love millinery!  This is making me want to get back onto my Edwardian suit, just so I can make the hat…

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Further Mulling

(no millinery-related puns intended)

So nothing further was accomplished on this today due to 5 million other things to do, other than getting some Heat N Bond tso that I can double my buckram (can I just say formally that I hate any thing with “n” in the name instead of “and”?  Come on people, use an “&” if you’re feeling the need to be snappy).

But I have spent the day worrying about something, and that is how this sucker will stay on my head.  I was trying to keep the proportions/shape of the hat to purple/black striped fashion plate, which I think I’ve done successfully.  But I’m never quite sure how to attach hats to a hedgehog wig, given that most of the hedgehog comes from ratting.  My capote sits far down around my forehead, so that’s not a problem to keep on.  But it looks like in this and other fashion plates, it’s not really sitting down low around the forehead so much as perching on top.  I do wear a wig for hedgehog, so I could do a bun on top of my head that sits under the wig, which gets a hatpin through it… but I don’t want to spend the time to make a hat, only to have it flop around unsuccessfully!

So then I was thinking maybe I need to widen the crown and wear it lower, like the Vigee Le Brun painting (a look I don’t like as much, but which could be more practical).

There’s no great front shots of the hat from The Duchess, but the few there are again look perch-y, not low-on-the-forehead-y.  Update: I found another hat worn in The Duchess that’s a similar style, and it’s definitely a percher.  So I guess bun & hatpin is the way to go?

What do you think?

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It’s Been a CADDy Weekend

And it’s only going to get worse!  Here’s one of only two not-on-my-must-accomplish list (bad Kendra!  Should work on “must do’s” before “like to do’s”!) I’ve been noodling on this weekend:

There are a couple of 18th century events coming up:  GBACG’s Duchess of Devonshire tea which I am co-organizing (popular enough that it looks like we’re going to do a second event the following weekend!), plus a Lumieres event.  I’ve been wanting a 1780s tall crown hat for a while, and in order to resist the urge to make a new dress or jacket (which is a LOT of work), I’ve been channeling my energy into accessories.  Which is really a good thing, because I have TONS of plans to make accessories and I never get around to it because I get stuck in the mad rush of “MUST HAVE SOMETHING NEW” (which invariably takes waaaay  more time than making accessories, and means I never get around to said accessories!).

1787_maciet7I’ve been wanting a 1780s tall crown hat for a while now — really, since I saw this 1787 stunner about a year ago.  I’ll periodically trawl through my image morgue and every time I go by this it jumps up and hits me a couple of times and says, “RIDICULOUS STRIPES!  YOU MUST HAVE THEM!”

Today I randomly got a hair to finally make one.  I looked for more examples, so that I could see the various options.  Most of the images I have of this style, which seems to be definitely a late 1780s one, are from fashion plates — I know I’ve seen some paintings with this hat, but I can’t seem to find them on my computer!  I wanted to double check the proportions, as I started by using the ones in the fashion plate, and WHOA did it look ridiculous!  I remembered that there’s a similar hat in The Duchess, so that was helpful, and then I found this Vigee LeBrun painting which gave me a clearer idea.

Here’s the various inspirations, along with the pattern I came up with:

I messed around with some construction paper to make a pattern, basing the brim off of an Edwardian hat pattern that my fabulous milliner friend Lynne Taylor made for me (which one of these days I need to make!) — I made the brim slightly smaller.

I’m going to cover and trim it like the red & white striped hat in the inspiration gallery above, because I have some narrow red & white silk in my stash (left over from my stripey bustle dress) and my current theme is to Use The Stash!  I’ve got the covering fabric and flannel for mulling cut out, but I can’t get to the buckram until tomorrow as I need to pick up some supplies so I can double it.

Yay for stuff on my head!

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In Which I Cave

And realize that there’s no way I’m going to be getting to the hand sewn 18th c. outfit (stays, underpinnings, and Maja dress) until fall… and I really want to make something new for 18th c., and I want it to fit over my new stays shape.  So I caved and decided to make a machine made, modern corset supplies version now, and that way I can decide if I really love it enough (or if it needs tweaking) before making the ultra-period handsewn version!  Luckily, I have enough fabric to make 3 sets of stays, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my lovely red silk damask.  And, I can use the ivory petersham to bind it, and take my time trying to find some kind of silk taffeta ribbons that more closely resembles those used in the period for the handsewn version.

So I’m using two layers of corset coutil, and steel boning.  I cut out and marked the pattern, which took one day, and then another day to sew the boning channels.  I had a brief moment where I thought about repeating the technique of hand knotting all the machine-sewn stitches, then remembered how long it took me to do that on my 16th c. corset, and slapped some sense into myself.

I’ve since done all the eyelets — perfect handsewing for weekday evenings.  Now I need to get off my butt and actually order the boning, which I’ve been dragging my feet about!

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