Cool Image Resource

Gallica is the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in addition to having an AMAZING collection of interesting historical resources, I recently found that they have digitized some really interesting images… most particularly, a number of press photos of fashions worn at horse races from the 1900s onwards.  The 1910’s images are particularly stunning, and there appears to be more from the 1920s-30s, but I haven’t delved too deeply in the later stuff.

This stripey dress on the right is particularly calling to me — I’m wondering if I could repurpose my supplies from my long-planned-never-made 1909 suit project?  Or is the stripe not strong enough?

Fashions worn at the Auteuil races, June 1911

This outfit is also pretty kick ass:

Fashions worn at the Auteuil races, 1911

Here’s a link to all their images with the subject of fashion (“mode”) — 552 total, seems to cover late 19th century and into the 20th century.  If you’re interested in a more limited date range, try using their advanced search page and enter Subject: mode, By document type: Images, and then put some dates into By publishing year.

I Sewed!

And I even finished something! Okay, it was just a petticoat, but I’ll take what I can get.

I finally managed to sit myself down and finish this sucker. First I had to take off the lace I had added before, after finding a great matched set of black and white edging and insertion on ebay. Then I had to add the new lace, attach the flounce, and that was it — but it took much longer than it sounds. This whole heirloom sewing thing is fiddly, I tell you.

The one thing I’m not sure about this whole myth that one can use steam to pre-shrink lace edging/insertion. That’s what I did, as I couldn’t see throwing this stuff in the washing machine, but I’m really not going to be shocked if it does shrink and pucker my lovely hem ruffle once I was this thing.

petticoat petticoat

1909 Edwardian Suit

So, um, I’m done with the embroidering, with nary an update. What can I say, terminal laziness has set in!

I did pretty much all of the embroidery on the train to and from work, which was really enjoyable (now I’m wishing I had another similar project that was so easy to carry around, unlike my 1780 jacket which has fallen by the temporary wayside).

The only issue is that I used a pink pencil to draw the design — it’s supposed to work as an iron-on transfer (you first draw onto tracing paper) but I can report that while it does work, the lines are pretty blurry so I don’t recommend it — and now one of my pieces has a decided pink cast to it. And I don’t think it’s going to wash out. Oh well, c’est la vie!

embroidery embroidery embroidery

Now I need to clean my bedroom/sewing room so I can get at my machine again, and then start assembling the corset cover.

1909 Edwardian Suit

One $94 trip to Lacis and one marathon 5pm-1am sewing session later, and we have achieved corset! Yes, I’m insane… but I wanted to wear my Wings of the Dove dress to the GBACG Open House today just cause I had a yen to… but the thought of wearing my too small teens corset and being uncomfortable did NOT sound fun. Plus I got a bee in my bonnet. I’m weird that way.

It was relatively straightforward to put together — I do have a big awl stab in one my fingers (and bled on the corset — yay!). Forgot to buy one piece of boning so one side of one of the side seams is awaiting boning… but since I’d already put a similar corset together I pretty much knew the drill. Plus since I’ve invested in a grommet setting kit, that part has gotten much better (much fun to bang grommets on the fireplace at 1am! Yay!).

Not the most flattering pictures — I look pretty sausage-like — but it’s true to the teens tubular silhouette. And, most importantly, it’s A) stripey and B) SO COMFORTABLE. Wow. Right. Fitted corset = comfort. Forgot about that one!

And now I can sell my old one and try to recoup some money.

corset corset corset

See Costume ADD in action!

If it wouldn’t make too much of a mess, I think I’d be working on about 10 projects right now…

I did start embroidering the corset cover this morning on the train — all went well, very nice and relaxing.

But on Monday I decided to stop putting off (and start getting excited about) making a new version of my 1910s corset. It’s time to admit defeat on the first version, which was fit over my friend Bridget’s corset which we had laced WAY down, plus I thought I’d be optimistic and make it a bit smaller in case (ha!) I lost some weight. Well, it ain’t happening.

So I stuck my old corset on my dress form and started draping a new one — I’ve basically widened all the pieces through the bust and waist on all of the pieces except the side front. Then last night, in a fit of awakeness (maybe all that laziness has paid off and I’m fully rested? It could happen!) I cut out my coutil and cover fabric. The cover fabric is just fabulous, a white cotton satin with a narrow black stripe (stripedy! yay!) which was so generously donated by my friend Heather, who saved me the scraps from a wedding outfit she worked on at Dark Garden. I was originally worried there wouldn’t be enough fabric, but it turned out there some large enough pieces that I got the whole thing cut out with no problem. Yay!

Here’s some pics, just so you can see the fabric:

corset fabric corset fabric