Author: kendra

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So I kinda did a lot of sewing over break…

and, uh, kind of forgot to post about it.  oops!

Really, it’s because I was working on this project, and I thought it would go a little more smoothly than it has, and thought, “Eh, not really worth the trouble of making a dress diary.”  But I’ve hit a small bump, and it’s going to take longer than I thought, so here we are.

Here’s the project overview, FYI. (Sadly, there is no good way in WordPress to keep overview info like that with the related posts – grr).

I’ve decided I want a Pre-Raphaelite dress.  Throughout my teen and college years I loved the paintings of Waterhouse et al — I spent all of my European travels buying posters and postcards of Pre-Raph paintings and covering my walls with Ophelia and Flaming June.  Mostly, it was because of the romantic view of history and, of course, the costumes.

However, I already did the “take a modern pattern and wear it over a Victorian corset” thing, and I keep thinking about MAYBE doing a little bit more with the SCA than I currently do, and I saw Sarah‘s beautiful 14th & 15th century dresses, and then I had some CADD, and then I asked some questions on LJ… and the next thing you know, I’m making a Gothic Fitted Dress using the fabulous research & construction advice on Costly Thy Habit and La Cotte Simple.

Aided a LOT by Charlotte of Costly Thy Habit, I decided to go for general 15th c. fitted dress. Tasha’s article, “How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Layers” helped me wrap my brain around the style, and Charlotte’s article, “Will the Real 15th Century Sleeve Please Stand Up?” helped me avoid the different color pinned on sleeve trap.

The fabric I’m using is a silk drapery sheer damask in a dark red and gold-ish.  It’s a weird fabric — it looks opaque until you hold it up to a light.  So I am underlining it in white linen.  I did debate whether to use linen for the dress, since I LOVE the dress in The Tempest… but the pretty pretty princess in me won out!  I originally bought this fabric as a mystery fabric on ebay, hoping it might work for a 16th c. Venetian.  I’m glad I didn’t use it for that, as I don’t think it’s going to hold up SUPER well because of the loose weave.  Oh well, if I can get 1-2 good wearings out of this, I’ll be happy!

I bribed Sarah to come over and drape the pattern on me, because I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of draping on a dress form — it’s one thing if you’re draping over a corset, but if we’re talking JUST body then I know my dress form isn’t going to be close enough to my shape.  She came up with a lovely drape using the curved front method, which I faithfully took a picture of and now can’t find.

I used Charlotte’s dress fitting & construction articles to figure out the gores and how to insert them, although for some reason I was picturing super narrow gores (like say maybe 7-10″ wide at the bottom), so thought I had tons of fabric.  Luckily I asked some questions of Charlotte on LJ before I cut, and realized that I needed as much fabric as I could get into the gores — I ended up with 8 gores about 29″ wide which, with the straight panels which are cut in one with the bodice, meant a hem of about 270″ (which is apparently just about the least I could get away with).  I had to use most of the fabric (don’t worry, there’s a piece left over for sleeves) and put in half of the gores upside down… luckily I don’t think it’s too apparent.

As I was sewing, I kept going and reading more and more research about these dresses (mostly from Charlotte & Tasha’s sites, but also searching out images etc.).  I’m glad that I did in that I was originally going to put the lacing in the CB, which apparently there is no evidence of, so phew on that… but it got a bit silly as really, what I want is a decently-period-but-good-enough-for-government-work medieval dress to swan about it.  I do, however, have a nice extension of my costume image morgue now into the 1400s, and maybe someday I’ll make a burgundian overdress for this and… oh no, a dark path opens before me!  Watch out, soon I’ll be wearing hennins!  (Side note:  I am immensely proud that I have trained my husband as to the term “hennin.”  About once a year we’ll be looking at something in a museum/on TV/whatever and I’ll say, “And what’s that pointy hat called?” and he’ll say, “Hennin!” and I’ll beam with pride.  Boys!  They are trainable!)

So I flatlined everything, cut gores, slit panels, sewed in 10 million gores, faced the neckline and CF, and made 10,000 lacing holes so that I could finally have a try on (what? make lacing strips? that’s far too practical!).  All went well — I was even impressed that I really DIDN’T need to wear any sort of bust support underneath — until I kept tightening the lace and ended up with the mashed boobs of doom.  Ooops.  Looks kind of weird from the front, looks REALLY weird from the side.  I found if I opened up the CF about 2″ over the bust that it looks lovely, so I’m going to open up the side seam and put a gusset in each side.

Then, it’ll be on to sleeve and hem land!

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Ye proverbial corset supply question

Now that Farthingales LA has turned into Vogue Fabrics, who will only sell me German plastic boning by the coil ($150 a pop), I’m trying to find an alternate source.

Has anyone ordered from Greenberg & Hammer?  I guess you have to be old school, download their catalog, and order by phone?  Seems like a huge hassle.

Farthingales Canada is an option, altho not preferred because of crazy shipping rates to the US.

I refuse to shop from Grannd Garb, they screwed up one order multiple times and it took months to get everything right.

Corsetmaking.com doesn’t have German plastic boning in stock (says to special order, but with no info about how one would do that.  (Customer service = hard, apparently!)

Any other options?  I need:  standard white spring steel boning, extra hard spring steel boning, and German plastic boning.

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Winter Break Is Upon Us

Which means it’s time for the sewing room to get cleaned and used!  I’ve been knitting a lot lately — it’s cold and I’m lazy, and knitting requires no getting up off the couch.  I’ve finished one mitt, from a very modern pattern, that will be used for 18th century, but now that I have almost two weeks off, I need to get more ambitious.

My early 2010 docket looks like this:

A medieval and/or Pre-Raphaelite dress, for a Pre-Raphaelite event.  I’m torn between doing something very historically accurate so that I can use it for SCA purposes, or going all Waterhouse-y because hey, no one’s going to kick me out of an SCA event for not being historically accurate!  I have some silk damask drapery sheer fabric (it’s weird, you can’t tell that it’s sheer until you hold it up to the light) that I’m thinking I’ll use, lined with linen.  I’m going to hire Sarah to drape the dress on me because it needs to be draped on the body, and my arms aren’t that long.

A man’s Elizabethan outfit — shirt, trunkhose & canions, doublet, and hat.  Sit down for this one – my husband is going to get gussied up for a 16th century event!  Oh, and HE chose the puffy pants option over Venetians!  Color me shocked! I’ve ordered the Tudor Tailor pattern as hello, boy clothes are not my forte, but until it shows up I can’t do much except for the shirt.

Those are the two things I NEED to make before May, and is probably more than enough!  So I won’t continue to ponder new 16th century and 18th century outfits for myself.  I am debating whether I want to make a machine-made version of my new 18th century stays, as the handsewn-outfit-from-hell Maja project is going to get pushed back to summer/fall.  I did start hand sewing a new 18th century shift, then realized halfway through that it was ridiculous to hand sew a new shift when I desperately need one NOW, and it will get a lot of heavy wear & machine washing.  So I finished it on the machine!  I’ll make the handsewn one once the Maja dress is actually made.

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Gwendolen – Done, Worn, Yay!

So I had two things left to do on this project before I wore it:

1) The skirt. I made it to have a long train, which was great for Costume College (carpet!) and not so great for Dickens Fair (gross Cow Palace floor complete with sawdust!).  So I put the bustle, petticoats, and skirt on my dress form, grabbed a lot of safety pins, and started pinning up the train.  I futzed with different options and basically ended up making the “pouf” part of the skirt bigger. I tried to mostly pin it to the ribbon tie, but that didn’t totally work so I pinned it to the top petticoat as well, and then just put those on at the same time. I also cut off the ribbon ties and made an actual attractive pieced bow, rather than the hastily tied bow from the first wearing — altho you really can’t see it in the pictures!

2) The bonnet. I had the time for once to indulge my seldom indulged love of millinery.  I’m not terribly good at it, but I like it!  So I made Lynn McMasters’s Mid-Victorian Winter Bonnet. It all went together swimmingly — there were a few confusing steps in the pattern instructions, but they were relatively straightforward construction elements so it all worked out fine.

The difficulty was in choosing the covering/trimming.  I constantly pick up bits and pieces of ribbon, flowers, feathers, etc. thinking, “This will be perfect for hat trimming!”  But I don’t really get around to hat making/trimming often enough.  So I REALLY wanted to make this out of things from my stash.  However, normally I try to avoid the matching hat, as I feel like it looks too costumey (most historical women probably wouldn’t have had a hat to match every outfit).  But looking through my stash of leftover fabric and possible trims, I couldn’t find anything else to use.  Plus, I had this FABULOUS purple and white striped ribbon that would go so perfectly — the purple was a darker shade, and the stripes were narrower, but that made for interesting contrast.  So I sucked it up and covered the hat with the leftovers of the dyed velvet.  Then I used a lot of the purple/white striped ribbon and some ivory plush velvet to make a bow and other fiddly bits.  It wasn’t quite working until I sucked it up and went to Joann’s and found the white soutache-y trim — until then, it was just this huge expanse of velvet with a bow on the side!  I also bought some short ostrich feathers, which I wired together and curled using Lynn’s instructions.

I really like the finished hat, except when I went to wear it, I found that it really needed a LOT of flat head on which to sit.  Which meant that my hairstyle, which normally would have crossed the top of my head to carry the weight, had to really hang off the back of my head giving me an instant hair headache (yes, I made anchoring buns!).  Oh well, we suffer for fashion, right?

Thanks to Sarah for a lot of these final pictures!  You can see my other photos from our trip to Dickens Fair on Flickr.