rewear and refresh

Soooo... it's been 6 months since my last blog post, and I thought I'd drop in and let you all know what I've been up to. I had a big push of productivity last spring and summer, but then I crashed after Costume College and desperately needed some time to hibernate and recuperate. It's been good. I really needed a break from sewing to recharge my batteries a bit. But I haven't stopped going to costume events during this past year - I've just been rewearing older pieces from my wardrobe and giving each outfit a few tweaks to make them feel more fun.

I started off last January by wearing my mourning calico to a exhibition of artwork by Gustave Caillebotte. I took this opportunity to make a new set of white collar and cuffs to finish off the dress. The inner collar and cuffs are items that you almost always see in original Victorian fashion plates and photographs, but as modern costumers, we tend to leave them off - probably because they were separate items and aren't typically included in the display of surviving Victorian garments in museums, so our eyes aren't as accustomed to seeing them there. But 19th century women used the inner collar and cuffs to protect the dress from dirt and body oils, and they could be easily removed and laundered, so it makes sense that they were essential finishing touches during the period. I ran out of time and didn't get to finish my own collar and cuffs for the first wearing of this dress at Costume College, but the dress feels SO much more complete now that I have them.

You can see the difference between the dress with and without the collar/cuffs in these pictures, and I also wore a new bow at the neckline to change things up a bit more. It's a subtle change, but I like it a lot better this way. The cuffs are just rectangular strips of cotton edged with eyelet that I tacked to the inside of the sleeves. The collar came from a mysterious little pattern on page 294 of Fashions of the Gilded Age, Vol. 2. The diagram is not labeled and there's no illustration showing what the pattern piece looks like when made up, but I suspected that it was one of those jaunty winged collars that you see so often during the natural form years. Sure enough - it worked perfectly!  

My next event was a trip to the Cowgirl Museum, so I decided to restyle my Victorian cycling outfit with some new accessories to give it more of an Old West look. This one didn't require any sewing at all, which was a wonderful treat. I just wore a different hat, a bandanna, some leather gloves, and an old belt and pouch with a turquoise brooch in the place of a buckle. I wish I could claim that the holster was mine too, but this piece was just on loan from my friend Christy for this picture.  

I found it amusing that Christy had also restyled one of her old dresses to give it a cowgirl vibe, and we happened to have worn these outfits together at another event 4 years ago. Even when we were supposed to be proper ladies, we still couldn't resist pretending to be outlaws! I guess it just runs in our Texas blood.

Finally, the local costume guild organized an 18th c. dinner party, so I decided to wear my black chemise once again. To change this one up, I wore my big embroidered kerchief, a new purple striped sash, and I rewound my turban with some purplish-grey silk. But most importantly, I styled a new wig that matches my natural haircolor, which was a HUGE improvement! (Good lord! What was I thinking with that crazy blond mess on my head?!)  

I have a bad habit of wanting to make new costumes for EVERY event that I go to, but this year has made me grateful to have some good pieces in my wardrobe that I can rework and rewear in different ways. Plus, I've really enjoyed focusing on the stress-free fun of wearing costumes vs. the often exhausting process of making them. I have to admit that I'm itching to make some new things again, and I've already started one big project that I'll be sharing here soon. But hopefully I'll be able to stay a little more balanced with my work load in the future, and I think this sewing hiatus has taught me to appreciate my older costumes a lot more than I used to.

BTW - if you'd like to see more pics from my recent costumed adventures, feel free to check out my flickr. Even when I'm not blogging, flickr is one place that always stays updated because I like to share my pics with my wonderful friends in the DFWCG. And if you happen to be in the area - come out and join us! We'll be adding a bunch of new events to our calendar over the next week!

mourning calico

So back in January, I shared a new natural form dress that I had made for a Little House on the Prairie group that was in the works for Costume College.  But then I had a change of heart and decided that I wanted a lighter weight cotton dress instead of a heavy wool one.   I also am a hopeless follower, and when I heard that my friends were making calico prairie dresses, I decided that I needed one too!  I found a great deal on a repro calico fabric from Saunders Fabrics, and I picked a black fabric with a simple diamond pattern, which I thought it would make a lovely half-mourning dress.  I'm so glad that I ended up switching plans because I think we made such a fun little group of Ingalls sisters in our nicely coordinating calicos.

For something a little different, I decided to try a yoked bodice, which was an incredibly popular style in the late 1870's.  In April of 1879, Peterson's Magazine features a plaid yoked house dress and stated that "the deep waist is made plaited back and front into a yoke; a belt around the waist, with a bow of ribbon on one side." Most of these yoked bodices had high, round necklines or small standing collars, but I found one example of a yoked bodice with a middy collar on a teenaged girl, so I thought that the V-neck might help keep me cool while I also try a style that I haven't done before.  

To help me get started with the construction, I found 2 yoked bodice patterns and several narrow overskirt diagrams in Fashions of the Gilded Age, Volume 1: Undergarments, Bodices, Skirts, Overskirts, Polonaises, and Day Dresses 1877-1882.  Although I changed these patterns up quite a bit to make my own dress, they were a huge help as I figured out the overall shapes.  

I used cotton velveteen for the collar, cuffs, and belt, and I edged it with natural linen rickrack, which really made these features stand out nicely.  The buttons are vintage and slightly mismatched, which is a fun little detail that seemed appropriate for a prairie dress.  I'm always amused when I see Victorian photos of women who have a mismatched button on their dress.  It happens more often than you would think, and I love imagining a practical frontier woman just replacing a missing button with something "close enough" and not wasting any time worrying about it.

I also wore a silk bow at my neck, and a mourning rosette at my waist. The rosette was a lovely gift from 2 friends, and I made a faux tintype of my husband to use for the portrait.  Similar mourning badges were quite popular after the death of Abraham Lincoln, and you can see a similar style here.  

As the finishing touch, I restyled a vintage black straw hat into a bonnet.  You can see the "before" version on the left.  I cut the brim off in the back of the hat and then wired the edge and covered it with petersham ribbon so that I could curve it around my face.  Then I stitched some wide vintage lace into the inside of the brim, and I trimmed the outside with some vintege ribbon and the original black feathers from the hat.  The ivory silk bow that was around the hat when I bought it was repurposed for the bow at the neck of my dress.

I love the long, loosely curled ponytails that you sometimes see in the late 1870's, so I took the easy way out of styling my hair and just attached a clip-in hairpiece and tied it with a bow. I think it's a nice change of pace from the more severe buns of the 1880s.

I only got a few posed pictures of my dress at Costume College, but I'm hoping to get some more fun ones in a pretty setting when I wear it again this winter.  But if you'd like to see a few more, you can check out my Flickr album.  

natural form skirt supports

One of the biggest hitches in my natural form dress plan this past summer was having to make a whole new set of skirt supports before I could start the dress.  When I first planned out this project, I naively thought that I could get away with just my regular Victorian petticoat under the gown, but I quickly discovered that even though this period claims to be "natural", it takes a good bit of engineering to support the swooping trained skirt shape of the late 1870's.

I ended up making 4 different skirt foundation pieces to wear under my ball gown, and all of these pieces include recycled materials in them in one way or another, so I'm using this set of skirt supports for my Re-make, Re-use and Re-fashion entry for the Historical Sew Fortnightly.  I'm bending the rules a bit because the bulk of these garments were made well before the challenge started, but I did put some finishing touches on them this month by adding a few final hooks and ties.  

The first garment that I made is a hip pad, which was constructed from embroidered taffeta and cotton batting that came from a fancy coverlet that was given to me years ago.  My version is modeled after the 1901 patent drawing shown on the left, but a wide variety of hip pads also existed in the 1870s as well, so I felt confident that the idea was sound even though I used a later style for reference.  Although the shape is subtle, it adds a bit of "umph" to the hourglass look, which is so important with princess-line natural form dresses.

Next I made a set of natural form hoops by using one of the patterns in Fashions of the Gilded Age.  The hoops help hold the train of the skirt out below the knees and give it a much nicer line.  The fabric is cotton sateen, and the hoop wire was recycled from a beat up vintage hoop skirt that a friend gave me.  I modified the original pattern slightly by leaving off the front slits, and I also made a laced panel behind the legs like you see on lobster-tail bustles, which allows me to adjust the size of the hoops.  I have never worn a bustle so low on my legs before, and I was worried that it would make it difficult to walk and dance, but I just left a few buttons at the bottom undone for the gala, and I barely even noticed that I was wearing it.

Over the hoops and hip pad, I wore my usual Victorian petticoat, but then I added a tie-on ruffled back piece to fill out the train.  The pattern for this garment also came from Fashions of the Gilded Age, and the organdy ruffles all came from a ripped and stained vintage petticoat.  This piece is actually a good bit longer than it appears in these pictures. It has a flat section at the top that is folded under when worn with this particular dress, which shortens the train length to work with demi-train styles.  If I ever get a chance to make a gown with a longer train, all I have to do it flip up the top and it will work for longer lengths too.

Finally, I made a balayeuse for the train, which is just a ruffle of fabric that helps support the skirt hem, provides a bit of decoration if the hem flips over, and it keeps the inside of the train clean.  All I did for this one is cut the ruffle off of a badly damaged Edwardian petticoat and baste it to the inside of the skirt train.  You can see my balayeuse at the top of this post.

To show you what a difference these foundation pieces make in the overall look of a dress, I took two sets of pictures of my natural form ball gown - the first pictures show the dress worn over these four new foundation pieces, and the second set of pictures shows it with my corset and petticoat alone.  It all flows so much nicer with a proper foundation, so I'm very glad I took the time to build the right support garments for my dress.

natural form ballgown

I have one more new dress from Costume College and the Historical Sew Fortnightly that I need to document, but I think I have developed "post-traumatic sewing disorder" and I can barely force myself to write about it.  I had intended to make this one for the Pretty Pretty Princess HSF challenge back in mid-June, but even though I picked an understated natural form style specifically to be "quick and easy", it turned into nothing but constant stress and design problems.  It ended up being 7 weeks late for the challenge, and I was actually still sewing and trying to figure out the final decorations just hours before the gala.  While there are some things that I like about the way the dress finally turned out, the main things that I see when I look at the pictures are things that wish I had done differently.  Don't you hate it when projects turn out like that?  :P

Anyhoo.  Here's a few details about this one, and then let's never speak of it again.  LOL!

One of the many gowns from 1877
that helped inspire my dress  

The dress is made for a combination of 4 different patterns from Fashions of the Gilded Age, and I did not base it on one particular fashion plate or image - it's a hodge-podge of a lot of different sources from around 1876-1878.   I broke from my stash-only rule this year and bought 6 yards of heavy sateen for the body of the gown, a yard of silk taffeta for the trim and bertha, and several yards of 6" rayon chainette fringe for the trim (I bought the fringe from Dove Originals and definitely recommend them as a source for trim!).  I also used up several dress-lengths of misc. fabric from my stash for the mock-ups and linings, so the stash-busting goal wasn't completely ignored.  I only had 6 yards of the sateen to work with, and while I thought this would be plenty of fabric when I started, I ended up having to scrap the decadent long train that I originally envisioned for my dress, which was a real downer because that was one of my favorite parts about my original plan.

The one part that I was really excited about experimenting with on my dress was the fringe, which I dyed and knotted myself after realizing that there was no way on earth that I could find pre-made fringe to match the odd salmon color of my gown.  The fringe is my favorite part of the whole dress, and I loved the way it moved when I walked or danced.  I also found that knotting yards and yards of fringe was strangely zen-like and relaxing, and that was the one part of this project that I really enjoyed.  I seem to be a bit of a fringe-making fanatic after working on this dress and my fringed Redingote from last fall.  I think it's my own quirky equivalent to women who knit or crochet.

Here are some of the posed pics from the night of the gala.

Although this project was difficult in many ways, I am still so grateful that I made it because it allowed me to be a part of a somewhat accidental theme group with my friends Merja and Elizabeth in our pink-hued natural form gowns.  I had SO MUCH FUN spending time with these ladies all weekend, and being a part of a "pretty pink princess" group with my buddies at the gala was one of the best highlights of my trip.

 

And the pink dress luv didn't stop there either.  There seemed to be fabulous pink dresses everywhere this year, and mingling among all those gorgeous pink confections made my matchy-matchy brain delirious with happiness.

So that's pretty much it for this one.  I'll be back sometime in the next few days to talk about the foundation garments that I also made to create this outfit.  Special thanks to Loren, Meilin, and Lauren for allowing me to use some their photos.   I also wanted to thank a few amazing friends who helped me find inspiration, make decisions, buy supplies, and stitch on last-minute sleeves.  I couldn't have done it without you!  

Lace and lacing - 1876 corset

So last month my dear friend from the Before the Automobile made the most beautiful corset that I have ever seen, and I instantly decided that I must have one too!  I was pretty unsatisfied with the natural form corset that I made at the beginning of the year because it wasn't curvy enough and it hurt my ribcage if I laced it tightly.  So instead of altering that old corset, I decided to try this whole new pattern instead.  Plus, it would work for the HSF "Lace and Lacing" challenge, so I couldn't resist giving it a try.

But I also didn't want to spend any more money on corset supplies, so I cobbled this together with supplies that I had in my stash by recycling two failed corsets and a ratty old girdle (which explains the oddly wide boning in some places).  Unfortunately, I think some of the compromises that I had to make ended up hurting the final results.  I moved the boning pattern around and omitted some of the boning channels because I was short on boning, and as a result, my version of this corset wrinkles like crazy. But the corset does seem to be a little bit curvier and it is a lot more comfortable, so you win some, you lose some, right?  I'm just crossing my fingers that the wrinkles won't show when I'm fully dressed.

Anyway, if you would like to try this pattern too, maybe you can learn from some of my rookie mistakes.  Here are my thoughts about it:

• The side panel of this corset wraps around the body from the upper back to the lower belly, which pushes in your sides and makes your waist look smaller from the front.  Cool, right?  But those wrapping pieces also makes it prone to wrinkles, and I never could figure out a way to make them go away.  I think part of the problem is because of the way I cut the grain on the side piece. I followed the grain markings on the pattern (or at least, what I thought were the grain markings), and it resulted in a side piece that is somewhat on the bias when assembled.  If I was making it again, I would ignore the grain markings and make that piece so that the waist was on the true straight of grain when assembled.  
• The wrinkling on the side might also have been fixed if it was boned more heavily.  If I ever make this pattern again, I'll put in as many boning channels as will fit in the front and side body pieces.  
• This pattern is INCREDIBLY short waisted.  I added two inches to the torso, and I could have easily added another inch or two.  The bust gores are quite low on my corset, which is causing even more problems with wrinkles since the gores hit below the breasts and there is nothing there to fill them out.  I ended up having to reduce the size of the bust gores to compensate for this, but that also reduces the hourglass effect.  If the bust had hit me in the right spot, the pattern still would have been too big, but at least I could have padded the cups out and made it work.  If I padded them at this level, I would have ended up with saggy granny boobs.  Not pretty.
• I raised the top edge of the corset by half an inch for the busk panel and first bust gore.  When my friend made up this pattern, she discovered that the top dipped in a good bit at the center-front, and I wanted mine to be more straight across.  I was worried that the dip would make it not as supportive, but I think hers is a prettier shape.  I'm not sure if I would keep my alteration if I made it up again.  Maybe if I got the but gores to hit me in the right spot, it wouldn't have been necessary to raise the top edge.   
• The gores on this corset are very easy to set in and adjust, which makes it a wonderful choice for somebody who is nervous about gores (like me!).  I ended up merging the back hip gore with one of the side panels and added a seam there because I thought it would be easier to construct that way, but the gores really weren't hard to set in at all, and I don't think I would bother with that alteration again.  
• I added some extra width to the hip gores, which helped exaggerate the hip-spring at the top of the hips, but I ended up with too much room at the bottom.  I could have curved the hip seams in at the bottom and it would have made the bottom of the corset smoother and made the lacing gap more even.
• I had to cut off an inch from the bottom front of the corset to make it possible to sit in it.  It's not uncomfortable now, but it still buckles a little when I sit, so I probably could have raised the bottom even more.  
• This pattern does create a really nice rounded belly effect that was so popular at the time.  I also bent my busk quite a bit to make it have a spoon-like shape over the belly.  

I definitaly like this corset more than my last one, but it still needs some tweaks to make it perfect.  I don't have time to mess with it any more right now, but I think I'll invest in more boning and prettier fabric and give it another stab at some point in the future.  For more info about the pattern and PROPER construction techniques (vs. my hack-job), check out the amazing Before the Automobile blog.