Category: 1775 maja

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Maja waistcoat: aha!

I was peering at the copy of this painting in “Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe,” and it’s actually a slightly clearer copy — and what I noticed there, which you can’t see in the scan I have on my site, is that there is a very faint line of the spangle decoration that angles up from the top of the bottoms & loops to that folded back corner.  Aha!  So it IS angled, and I think actually closes a bit further over than I currently have it — off to monkey with my current pattern.

And, thank god for protractors — even so, drawing the wave pattern for the spangles has been waaaay too fiddly!

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Beginning the Maja!

Or, peering at high resolution scans and trying to figure out wth is going on there!

So I am nearly done binding my new stays, but while I wait for a bit more silk ribbon to show up in the mail, I decided to get started on my big project for the summer:  the c. 1775 Maja fancy dress costume.  I’m going to drape the waistcoat, then it will be on to spangle embroidery land!  I figure I may switch off between draping further sections and what should be endless spangle-ing.

Here’s mockup #1 and 2.  I obviously worked a lot from the original painting, but also used this jacket from the Museo del Traje as a reference for the back.  I found a lot of paintings (like this Goya) that show even narrower back seams… but those all appear to be from the 1790s, so I thought this seemed more reasonable.

The hitch?  WTH is going on with the front?  It looks all fine and dandy, until you realize that there appears to be a center front opening closed with buttons and loops on the bottom half, but on the top half there’s a wide overlap that’s falling back!  So, uh, how does it close?  I poked around and none of the images I can find of extant garments from Spain in this era, or maja paintings, show anything similar.  The closest thing I could find was this 1777 drawing of a maja, which has an asymmetrical front flap opening — but that’s on the jacket, not the waistcoat!

Peering and peering at the original painting, I’ve semi-decided that the waistcoat must close center front, but then have a flap that overlaps near the top.  There is a button that’s sort of shadowed that COULD be in line with the other center front buttons, or maybe is further over and so could be the bottom edge of this flap?  The only other alternative is that the center front buttons/loops are non-functional, and the bodice overlaps really far over — but that seems impractical, as it would be hard to fit that wide of an overlap.  Right now, the overlapped top that I’ve draped is in a square shape, but it just occurred to me that it COULD be angled from the CF line up to the overlap (so more of a triangle shape).

What do you think?  How would you drape this sucker?

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I May Need to Move to Spain

Valencia, specifically.  So, I am forcing myself to Stay On Target and am starting the Maja dress!  What, you may be asking, is this?  Oh, only a costume that I’ve been saying I’m going to make for about three years.

To recap:  it’s a mid-1770s (c. 1773?  1775?  I’ve seen conflicting dates, gotta look into that more) portrait of the Marquese de Llano wearing a masquerade costume of a Maja.  Majas/Majos were working class people who lived in Madrid in the late 18th and 19th centuries.  They spoke “pure” Castilian, wore elaborate outfits, and had a general swagger and bravado that captured the imagination of Spain.  In time, their clothing became adopted as the national traditional dress of Spain.

So in doing all this research on the style, I found a ton of cool resources, and then stumbled across Las Fallas, which is a big annual festival held in Valencia.  Why is this exciting?  Because they wear E-LAB-ORATE “traditional Spanish dress”… which is based on late 18th century Maja costumes.  Of course, it’s morphed over time, but it is totally gorgeous.  To wit:

Fallas Valencia 2010 (95)

Fallas Valencia 2010 (71)

Fallas Valencia 2010 (133)

Fallas Valencia 2010 (94)

I mean seriously, where do I sign up???  The hair!  The jewelry!  The fabrics!  The 18th c. silhouette!  Aiee!!!

There is, of course, a whole industry in Valencia around these costumes… but a whole lot of searching later, and it looks like not much of it is online.  Bah – I had gotten all excited about buying some shoes, like these (and I think Trystan needs these!).

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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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Tweaking the Vision

This project is undergoing a tweak — I think it’s going to become the opportunity for me to make one costume, inside to out, to the best of my abilities and as historically accurate as possible (read more philosophizing on why). Now, there will inevitably have to be compromises made, but I want those to be really conscious compromises. And most important, I give myself NO DEADLINE for this project. I will probably pick it up and put it down a million times.

So! I’ve wanted new 18th c. stays for a while, particularly something more shaped as in the 1780s styles, and was excited to see JP Ryan’s new shaped stays pattern. I spent the day tweaking the pattern based on various extant examples in Corsets & Crinolines, the Kyoto book, the Salen Corsets book, and Historical Fashion in Detail. I love playing with boning patterns and layouts!

I’ve got three questions for y’all:

1) I’m planning to bone these with plastic boning (with possibly a bit of metal boning as well for support, which is period per Norah Waugh). I am having a hard time getting over the desire to gag at the words “plastic boning,” but I have accepted that it is the best modern substitute for baleen (which, sorry, even though apparently it is theoretically possible to purchase from Inuit sellers, I have real ethical objections to). Yes yes, you’re all saying “Why don’t you use reed? It’s historically accurate and cheap!” I’m not, because while it was used in the period, it was considered a substandard material and I am not trying to create a lower class outfit. Stays of the sort I want to make would be boned with baleen, so it’s a baleen substitute I need. And I have seen the substandard-ness in action, with many friends who’ve made (beautiful) reed boned corsets whose tabs have broken. I’m not willing to put tons of work into a pair of stays that are only wearable for a year or so!

So given all that preamble… does anyone have recommendations for quality plastic boning? I’ve used metal for so long that I’ve never really paid attention to the various discussions. I was considering these 1/4″ wide plastic bones from Farthingales LA – opinions?

2) Linen is what’s period to use as interlining/support layers, but my experiences using it have been less than happy — it stretches! Who wants stretchy stays? Any advice on how you’ve dealt with stretchy linen? I’ve got some pretty heavyweight stuff, but it still stretched when I used it for my Nell Gwyn bodice. Do you just cut it down after you’ve sewn in the boning channels, or pattern the stays slightly too small assuming that they’ll stretch?

3) I can’t wrap my brain around butting the various pieces together and sewing them. What kind of stitch do you use, and how do you make certain they can take the strain? Should I use heavy thread? And how are the seam allowances on each piece handled — are they turned inside out like you would if you were bag lining? I’ve been checking Costume Close-Up and other sources, and can’t find any good explanation of this process.

Any advice much appreciated!