I guess that's all done and over with

I did finish my graduation underbodice in time, thankfully (all by hand, because I was too lazy to get my sewing machine out from the detritus of the basement) and was able to wear it to graduation.  Luckily the dress still fit, as small as ever - unfortunately, I tore it off my body as soon as physically possible (it must have been over 90 degrees, and it was a two hour ceremony) so I don't have many good shots of it.

Courtesy of our local newspaper - a picture of a picture.  (Hi, Mrs. J!!!!!!!)

I already did the explanation of this dress earlier in the year, and the underbodice is about as plain as it gets.  The whole ensemble was surprisingly cool despite the aforementioned temperature.

Now I'm working on cleaning up my sewing spaces, as my parents are moving house as soon as I leave for W&M, as well as a few small projects - a Revwar shortgown and, with some lovely teal silk I found, a new fancy 1860s corset.

And for Adi, the questions regarding the Liebster blog award:

1. What period was your first love or your introduction to historical costuming?  Wanna share a picture of your first costume?  Ahhh, my first love was definitely the 1830s.  I loved antebellum political history so much that I wanted to be there in as many ways as I could, so I started off with dreams of gigot sleeves and poke bonnets.  The best dreams of mice and men, you know.  I didn’t sew my first costumes; my mom is a lovely sewer and at the time was not working full time, so she did a lot of my early clothes – I started to take over bit by bit until I was sewing them all.

All poly brocade, all the time.

2. What period do you find most difficult?  Why?  I think that the 1770s closures are immensely frustrating. I usually end up deciding to just pin it closed, which makes the perfectionist in me wince (but it is period!)

3. How have you balanced school work and costuming and a social life?  Well, my teachers have been very kind about letting me sew in class, which helps with the schoolwork (that’s an easy 4-5 hours of work a day.)  I’m also a pretty sedate person by nature so it isn’t like I’m missing out on wild rave parties to sew – I usually only devote maybe 20 minutes a week to sewing outside of class.

4. Looking back at all the costumes you've made, which are you the most proud of?  I’m really proud of my 1840s ballgown.  That was my first all-hand sewn dress.  I just took it apart a few days ago, but wow, my stitches were so neat.

5. Where do you see yourself five years in the future, in regards to costuming?  Hopefully at Colonial Williamsburg in some capacity.  A girl can dream, right?

6. How does your family feel about your hobby?  They pay for it, and that’s really about it.  My mother loves it and shows pictures of my dresses to all of her friends, and my father is a lovely cameraman who thinks that all my dresses are pretty although his grasp on the construction is rather vague.

7. What is one piece of advice you can give to someone new to the hobby that you wish you'd gotten when you were just starting out?  (Or, alternatively, what is one piece of advice you got as a newbie that you'd like to pass on?)  I would have liked to know beforehand to start out with simple dresses made of cotton or linen or wool until I had the skill to work with the good stuff.  I think that if I had saved my good fabrics for now I would have had a lot of better-quality dresses.  Also, iron every seam ever.

8. What is your dream fabric to work with?   I really, really love tropical weight wool.  Something about the feel of functionality mixed with luxury. Mmm.

9. If you are comfortable with doing so, give us one random fact about yourself that you've never mentioned on your blog!  I always drink my coffee in a glass instead of a mug.   I also love economics and talking and reading and learning about economics, especially of early America (turn't up for Nicholas Biddle!)

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to talk about myself! c:

Edit:  This also happened.

 (Happy late Memorial Day!)

My oft-repurposed silk

Despite this fabric's tendency to get horribly, uncleanably stained, I really do love it.  And that's why I took apart my 1840s dress to use the skirt for something that I would actually, you know, wear once in a while.

I like that this picture makes me look a lil' bit like Laura Linney as Abigail Adams.

Once again, as I can't seem to grasp the schematics of hooks and eyes on a 1770s dress, this one closes with pins.  Which probably explains the occasional and grotesque wrinkles.

But it's smooth in this one!

Just the facts:

Pattern: JP Ryan's English/round gown, approximately 1776

Fabric: Silk-faced satin for the dress, linen lining, and a silk brocade for the petticoat.

Time:  An awful long.  I forgot how terrible it is to hand-sew fabric that's this stiff (look at the seeve ruffles stickin' up like icicles.)  Probably 2-3 weeks for both the dress and the petticoat, but I also had loads and loads of APs and finals and recitals to do.

Cost: About $25 for the silk brocade, but the rest is all stash.

Ultimate Prognosis: I really like this dress!  I'm never going to wear it outside, though.  It gets way too dirty way to easily. Just getting it onto my body in a decently clean condition was a trial.  Next time, I am definitely going to summon the courage to do hooks and eyes, and also try to fit the back better.

And I also have a choice photo from the english project that C and I did for our senior final, not only because I made the dress but because I think all of the pictures we took are comedy gold.

(HE'S WEARING NEON BLUE BASKETBALL SHORTS.)

My next project will be an underbodice for my sheer, because graduation is literally next week and I still haven't done that yet.  Until then, friends!
(Also, poll: does that brocade 'look' correct?  I might buy more of it but, you know, not if the pattern is off.)

And some more general exciting news!  The lovely Adi from Basically Creative Me has awarded me with the Liebster Blog Award.  I am so honored to be recognized by such a talented seamstress!  I promise that I'll have the requisite questions, responses and nominations up within the week.

Selfies in interesting headware

Taking pictures of onesself with a handheld is pretty difficult.  I apologize for the orangeish tint.

I decided I needed some more forms of headwear besides my straw plate hat, so I made a silk capote for my camp impression.  It was a quick, easy project, and I made another cap to go with it out of cotton organdy left over from my graduation dress.

       I generally went along Samantha McCarty's guidelines on how to make it, though I winged it a considerable amount.  The silk was left over from my black dress, the brim is cut from the back of my sister's watercolor paper pad, and the pattern is self drafted.  Took approximately two days to make, and the cap took about two days as well.

The brim was the trickiest part and I'm not thrilled with how it turned out, but it's a cute and passable little project to suck up some of my stash.

Speaking of stash taming, I'm doing a little project with my silk duchess satin 1840s dress that I have only worn once.  Let's just say that It's not going to be 1840s for very much longer.
Toodles!

A very Easter-ey dress

Proving, to my surprise, that 1770s fashion is considerably more comfortable than 1860s.
Also, in which I need to remember to buy more hooks and eyes at some point because I ran out.  Please do excuse the resulting fitting issues...

 

Just the facts:

Fabric:  Gorgeous tropical weight wool from Vogue fabrics. It's as soft and sheer as cotton voile, and at first I was so reluctant to make it into a 1770s dress rather than a summer Civil War sheer.  But I'm glad I did, because it's insanely light and comfortable.

Pattern: JP Ryan, as usual, altered to make a jacket instead of a polonaise. 

Time: About two weeks. We're having our house painted and I have finals coming up, so it's been pretty hectic at home.

What I learned/would change:  I'm definitely going to put some pleated trim on this and bone the back (it's so wrinkly I don't dare show pictures of it.) Also, the jacket is short in the back so the ruffle sticks up like a duck butt. It's not very attractive.  And of course, I need some hem tape. And I think the sleeve pleats are a bit too far forward, but that's my fault for being to lazy to put it on my dress form.

Me tripping (thanks, dad.)

I think the colors are very Eastery.  I'm going to put linen ruffles on the sleeve and put the hooks and eyes on for real before I wear it, but I'm pretty happy with it now.

Pretty in Blue

After the trial that was acquiring the right fabric in the perfect-ish shade, the harrowing experience of applying the lace, and then realizing that the bodice needs to be re-fitted, I'm pretty happy to be done with this dress.

 

And now, shameless self-aggrandizement via pictures.

 

Maman lent me her mother's pearls for the photos!

My bubby.

As you can see, the bodice suffers to be taken in a bit at the front.

Serious side-eye action.

Just the Facts:

Period:  Mid-1860s

Pattern: Janet Arnold's 1860s ballgown, and a lot of fudging it.  The skirt is box pleated and the sleeve us a normal puff sleeve, but I tacked it down in random places to make it look interesting.

Fabric:  Silk taffeta, white cotton lining, antique lace, cotton organdy, silk ribbon, velvet rayon ribbon.

Time:  Once I got the fabric, about a week and a half.  But lordy, what a challenge that was!

Verdict:  Meh.  It is exactly what I had expected it to look like.  I'm going to seriously refit the bodice before I wear this in public.  This is my first time making a dress with princess seams, and the finished garment behaved very differently than my poly taffeta mockup, unfortunately.  Luckily, I know what I need to do, I'm just too lazy to do it.

I'm also tepid about the concept of using antique lace for this dress.  I found this lace a few summers ago in a Michigan antique store for $5 with a few similar pieces, and I tried to be as careful as possible and used the strongest of the pieces.  That being said, I believe there's a special circle of hell for those who use and abuse antique clothing and I don't want to end up there, as the last thing that I want to do would be to ruin this gorgeous lace.  So I might take it off as a precaution...

Anyways, I have another modern dress in the making, so I'll probably post that soon.  Until then!

Love from the Underwoods

Or, experiments with online patterns.

As it turns out, sewing modern clothes can actually be pretty rewarding!

I was inspired by Netflix's masterful drama House of Cards (imagining a modern jacksonian political tv show while watching it;) more precisely, Claire Underwood's on point wardrobe:

So on point.

 And my take!

Just the facts:

Pattern: Burdastyle reverse pleated dress; I was drawn to it by the pleats that look like an en fourreau back.

Materials:  Strangely expensive? cotton pique, cotton thread and a miscellaneous zipper

Time:  About 5 hours (no, really, this was really quick!)

Opinion?:  Really great!  I'm going on a summer trip with a good friend of mine, so I wanted a cute but relatively modest summer dress.  A few considerations:  this dress is supposed to have sleeves, but me with my peasant laborer arms to not to well with standard sleeve sizes and I was too lazy to redraft the pattern; the side darts are really asymmetrical and need to be re-done at some point, and the whole thing needs a good ironing and de-linting.

Other than that, though, I feel pretty sassy and ready to take over Washington alongside my husband (played, obviously, by Kevin Spacey.)

 

It's only one layer, with pleats all around.  So basic, but so nice.  How I'm going to keep it white is beyond me.

 And then with a cute thrifted bolero to hide ungainly side darts:

I already stopped by my favorite fabric warehouse after a particularly grueling harp performance and picked up a dress length of wool blend that looks like it came out of Hannibal Lecter's closet for another rendition of this pattern (the new Hannibal, of course, not Silence of the Lambs Hannibal.  Ew.)

And because this is a historical sewing blog, here is a sneak peek of my finished dress (which will be photographed in earnest once my darling photographer comes home.  Hop on to my tumblr blog if you want to see more shots on my terrible mannequin.)

Until later!

Radio silence

I apologize for the recent lack of updates, friends!  I'm not dead.  I've just been working on little things and repairs (I made an underpetticoat and also made up the cotton print 1770s petticoat.)  I expected to get my fabric in a lot earlier than I did, but because I had to send the first batch back I was set back in my schedule.  But I'll have something very, very cool to show off soon.

In the interim:  If I started making little things, like aprons, sleeve ruffles, chemises, petticoats, and maybe larger custom orders, who would be interested?

c: