Diary of a Costumer

The body of the hussif dress is now complete, which can be seen in my most recent Youtube video. The apron is also complete, other than incorporating the giant needles. I finished making the needles yesterday, and I just plan to poke holes in the apron with my awl, slide the needles through (possibly fray-checking those holes first, but ideally not needing to do that), and then possibly securing the eye of the needle with some thread so they don't slip out. That way I can potentially close those holes back up if I'm not using the needles, instead of having them sewn open like an eyelet or buttonhole, which was my original idea. 

I also hope to start the applique around the bottom of the skirt today. I've pretty much decided to do the motifs as an applique instead of an embroidery, because it should be less stiff, and I can get them to look exactly right, instead of going with a pre-purchased close-ish design (since I really don't want to digitize my own embroidery designs right now). Beyond that, I just have to make the pincushion hat, and the hussif outfit will be done!

In Elsa news, the cape is now totally complete. I did wind up adding more rhinestones to the outside edge, but I made it so there were less and less rhinestones going from the bottom to the top. I also finally sewed the hooks/thread bars yesterday, which was the final thing I had to do. If the smoke clears up and the weather is decent this weekend, I hope to go get pictures of the whole thing, and then I can start on rhinestoning the diamond pattern around the bottom of the skirt, which is the only thing left for Elsa. 

As far as next projects go, I am really tempted to switch the order I had planned. I am making another Historical Halloween costume -- an 1888 Daisy dress, and I'm also making my version of the Strawberry Dress that is all over the internet. My strawberry fabric arrived last week, and so now I'm very tempted to start on that first, even though I do want to have the Daisy dress done by about the 2nd weekend of Oct... What might happen is that I start on the Strawberry dress, get to a decent point on it, and then start on the Daisy dress and work on them at the same time. Which is probably a bad idea, but that's what my CADD wants. 

Maybe I'm only posting every two weeks because time is just crazy right now? Because I could have sworn my last update was a week ago...

Anyway, I never did fix that wrinkle in the teens dress, though I know I still should. We had our little gathering at the rose garden, though I showed up quite late, and forgot my belt, so it's probably good that we didn't take too many pictures there. 

I finished the bootstrap form. It's decent, but not quite right. I think I have overstuffed her, especially in the upper back, so fixing the stuffing is on my to-do list this week. 

I finished the zigzags on Elsa yesterday, which is a real relief. I'm going to start draping the cape today, and possibly putting some rhinestones on it, depending on how far I get. This will probably be the last day I can rhinestone for about a week, because the weather is supposed to get crazy hot again. And I can't start on the diamond motif on the skirt currently anyway, because I want to get pictures of the dress after this heat wave, and it would be weird to have one or two motifs done. 

I also made two of the three skirts I wanted to make. I'm still waiting on the yellow circle skirt, but I finished the bunny skirt (which is maybe close to a 3/4 circle?) and the plaid skirt, which is a pleated with a tiny bit of flair to the hem. 

Oh, and I actually hit that distant-feeling monetization goal! I managed to make over $100 in my first month being monetized, so that was super exciting. And actually, I hit the 7000 mark on instagram, too. Now waiting on 8000 on instagram/3000 on youtube, but the growth seems to have slowed down on both. 

In other news, we had a lovely tiny event at a historical farm near my house this last Saturday, which was just so much fun. I can't believe I had never been before! And I'm co-hosting a #historicalhalloween2020 challenge on Instagram/youtube, where we pick fancy dress designs from history, make them, and share our progress/results. I'm making a late 1910s hussif costume, and an 1888 daisy costume, because I'm incapable of doing just one. I hope to start on the hussif by this weekend. 

It feels a little silly to post, since I don't feel like I've done much since my last post...

But in any case, my teens dress is getting closer to completion. It has sleeves and a collar now, and about 2/3 of the closures (I think there are something like 23 hooks and eyes on this dress). Besides the remaining closures, it needs a hem, either hems or cuffs on the sleeves (and lace), and I need to make the little section that fills in the neckline. I'm also going to make a belt for it, and I'm debating about making a guimpe as well, though I wouldn't be wearing the giumpe anytime soon. I might do a hat to match, too, though I'm not sure about that yet. 

I also did three more zigzags on Elsa, so they are now 3/8 done. I hope to do more today, since it's supposed to be one of the cooler days this week. 

CoCoVid went really well. My videos were all pretty well received, especially my one from yesterday on How to Get Started in Historical Costuming. In fact, they were all so nicely received that I think I might actually get monetized tomorrow instead of in Sept, so that's really awesome. I'm 79 hours shy, and yesterday, I got 266 hours! Visit youtube.com/c/ladyrebeccafashions to watch any of the videos. 

I did another 1.75 hrs of rhinestoning yesterday. The bodice now looks like this: www.instagram.com/p/CCaJYEAA6go/

I'm a little disappointed that the pink rhinestones at the waist look a lot darker on the dress than they do loose, and seem quite close to the purple, which is also darker than I would like,but it's too late to do anything about that now. I'm also a little worried about the longevity of the purple rhinestones. I had to reapply four of them after I put them on yesterday. I hope I didn't get a bad batch. 

Since then, I drew on the lines for the remainder of the bodice rhinestones, and hope to have those in place by the end of tonight. Then it's on to the skirt, which feels really daunting. 

I have to admit, part of me wishes I hadn't put any rhinestones on the bodice. It was so pure and elegant before. I hope I like it more once I put the skirt rhinestones on, but either way it's too late now. 

I think I'm going to start a sewing vlog! I kind of miss the old days on here/LJ, when everyone was constantly uploading with their sewing progress. I've been vlogging with Elsa, but since it is a group project with a shared timeline, I've had to save the videos, and they'll need to be all edited together and released in late August. It's hard to keep track of them that long term, but I like the idea of doing the updates every time I sew, so I think I'm going to start a weekly sewing vlog that will cover Sun-Sat, and go up every Tuesday. I'll start it once I start my next project (probably the 18th c one). Hopefully it will help with my watch hours as well, to have two videos come out every week. 

In Elsa news, I drew out the rhinestone pattern on the bodice yesterday, and plan to start applying rhinestones today. I'm a little worried, because I noticed I already lost two of my existing rhinestones. I like doing the heat fix kind, though, because glue sounds messy, but I've heard the glued kind sticks better? Maybe I should purchase some e-6000...

Argh. Sleevils. But look - two posts in one week! 

Of course, that said, I haven't done much since my last post. I cut out and flat-lined the two layers of silk organza for each sleeves puff, and gathered one of them up to play with. They're collapsing weirdly in the middle of the arm, so I have to figure out how to prevent that. Cynthia from Redthreaded said I should put a ruffle of nylon net not only at the shoulder (which I had already planned), but also around the bicep to prevent the collapsing, so I am going to try that. 

First, though I have to get the fitted inner sleeve right. Technically, I probably don't have to get it perfect, since it will be made out of the nude mesh, which does stretch in one direction, but I wasn't loving either of my mockups yesterday, and decided I didn't have the bandwidth to keep working on it, even though it wasn't even 9pm. I will try again today. 

So instead of doing that yesterday, I started on a smallish alterations project. I went to the thrift store on Tues for the first time since all this started, and found a wool evening skirt made by a Scottish kilt manufacturer. It is pleated around the back, but the front two pieces were basically flat pieces that wrapped over each other, which imo is ugly. So I unpicked all the finishings and the waistband on those front sections, and I'm going to seam them together, add a zipper, and pleat them into the waistband. I also have to cut off about a foot at the hem, because it's currently ankle length. I love plaid pleated skirts, and it will be nice to have one that is actually wool (and for only $10.99)!

2.5 weeks later and I'm back with yet another Elsa update. As you might guess from that, it's still going extremely slowly. 

I fit the organza outer layer to the satin layer, taking in the seams, pressing the seams to one side, and doing a rolled hem on the serger on all the seam allowances. I did wind up sewing this layer to the satin layer on each seam, to about high hip, in order to hold it in place and hopefully stabilize it more for the weight of the rhinestones. 

I had a minor setback with the horsehair braid. When the stuff I ordered came in, it was much stiffer than what I had started with, so I decided to pick out the facing I had already done on half the skirt, and put the new horsehair all the way around the hem, meaning the back would get kind of 1.5 stiffness, and the front getting 1 stiffness. Then I reattached all the facing, which took me forever because it's really hard to hold a 6" wide horsehair-braid hem in a comfortable way.

I think after I finished that, I did closures up the back? I can't quite remember the order of things. If so, that also involved putting a piece of boning in the center back. I decided that it was too scary to cut into the points of the neckline (and have probably been suffering due to that choice since then), and that I would instead make the mesh/organza neckline layer go over the top of the bodice and applique the points down on top. Except I made up the whole neckline area and then didn't like how I shaped the points, which is causing me all sorts of trouble, but I don't want to redo the neckline. 

Oh, and I roll-hemmed the hem of the silk organza layer. 

So back to the neckline. The neckline filler area is made up of a layer of nude mesh (the stretchy kind) with a layer of silk organza over, flatlined together and treated as one. There is another layer of nude mesh that goes underneath this, but only in the points of the bodice. On top of all that is a gathered layer of soft mesh/net (non-stretchy, left over from my giant turquoise ballgown), which gathers up into and over a collar band made of two outer and one inner layer of silk organza, which goes around my neck and sandwiches the gathered net/mesh. The inner band was also machine sewn to the mesh/organza collar layer. The nude mesh points layer is stitched in place on the bodice right now. The upper layers are basted together, and are basted into the bodice in the back/sides and pinned in to the front.

The issue is that the mesh/organza layer points are smaller than the bottom nude mesh and the top gathered net layers, so I am a) not sure how to sew them in place without obvious stitches, and b) not sure how visibly obvious that difference is. I've been waiting on some 3/8" velvet ribbon to arrive (which it should today) to see if I can cover and define the edges of the points/make everything look neater. *fingers crossed!*

Oh, and naturally, there's also been another setback. I finally got the 55" wide organza from Dharma Trading, but didn't open it until I went to go cut out the sleeves on Saturday. Naturally, it's nothing like the 45" organza, and in fact, seems closer to chiffon than organza. I talked to them yesterday, and they said they were sending out the 45" to me with a return label for the wider stuff, so I just hope that gets here soon. 

Once I finish the neckline and add the sleeves, (or possibly before the sleeves, depending on how long the organza takes to arrive), I will add the bones in the bodice. Then I just have to draw out the rhinestone pattern and heatfix 10k rhinestones all over. Oh, and make a little faux-watteau cape. 


In other news, I passed the 1k subscribers mark on youtube last week, which is really exciting! And not only have I been keeping up with one video/week, I also have planned out all the videos I'll be posting through early Oct (and even already have a few filmed and a couple edited). If you haven't watched any yet, go visit youtube.com/c/ladyrebeccafashions. 

I've been vlogging this whole Elsa progress, which will be posted in August, and also have some progress pics up on instagram already. 

I'm not sure how I keep letting this languish for so long. Whoops. 

Anyway, since my last post like three weeks ago, I finished the entire Edwardian ensemble (here's a pic) and started on 1890s Elsa, which feels like it's going very slowly. I had some hang-ups in the supply chain, where I needed to first wait for a twill order to pick up (I had to wait I think 2.5 days for my pickup order, and drive 45 mins to the only store that even had it in stock), and then needed to wait for a dharma trading order of silk organza (or technically, two orders, one of which I'm still waiting on but don't quite need yet.)

I mocked up a hip-length version of Elsa, which is an 1890s princess gown (similar to this one). Then once I had fit that, I cut out the twill I was using for the interlining, but cut it to the full length. Just cutting it took me a couple days because trying to make my brain work to figure out how to cut an 80" long piece on a 60" long table, which also needed to not flare out so much at the bottom that it wouldn't fit on the fabric was really difficult. The first two pieces literally took me two hours to cut. Eventually I got it, though, sewed it all together, and determined that the train had waaay too much flare. So I took out the two CB gussets, plus about 16" more, for somewhere upwards of 50" removed from the train flare. Much better. 

And it was a good thing I did. Because then I started cutting my silk, which was a silk satin faille that I bought from fabricmartfabrics in October during a flash sale for $12/yd. But after cutting half my pieces out, I saw some marks on one side of the fabric (luckily only about 1" from the selvage), and when I measured where those marks were in the length of the fabric to tell Fabric Mart about it, I discovered that they had only sent 9 of the 10 yards I ordered. Luckily, their customer service was super good about it, and within about 12 hours of me emailing them about it, they had not only refunded me for the missing yard and damaged section, but had refunded me half my original purchase. I so appreciated that!

In any case, if I had not removed all that flare from the hem, there is no way I would have been able to cut everything out of 9 yards. But since I did, I managed to cut the dress out in 8, which will leave me more than enough to get the lower sleeve cut out later. 

Then I cut out the silk organza pieces, which were the same size as the twill and silk satin, but with a little extra flare. This again took me two days because silk organza is the worst. I have since flatlined the silk satin and twill together, and assembled those pieces, and have assembled about half of the silk organza pieces. I will be flat felling these seams, but am waiting to do that till I try everything on. 

I have to figure out what I'm doing for the neckline, since I'm paranoid about doing just silk organza, after what happened with Mary Poppins's silk tearing. I tried ordering some nude mesh to go underneath to help support it, but I picked it up yesterday, and it is only "nude" if you've spent the summer on an Italian beach. So I think I might try dyeing some muslin a pale pink, to see if that winds up a little closer. I want to have a mockup of the neckline done before I bother trying the dress on, since I think that's really going to affect the fit. 

Anyway, that's where I am with my sewing currently. It's been hard finding motivation for the last couple weeks, and if it wasn't for the fact that I have unfinished edges of a ton of silk in my sewing room right now, I would probably be putting it aside for a bit in favor of something a little easier...

I blame the fact that I added youtube to my social media channels for not remembering to keep up with posting here enough. 

Because the thing is, I have been sewing. Quite a fair amount, in fact, because it feels good to keep myself busy with productive things. I finished the corset sometime last weekend. I wound up not ordering enough boning (apparently corsets have more than 10 yds of boning in them - who knew?), but luckily one of my local friends rescued me with a little, and I was able to finish the last three channels. 

Then Sunday, I attempted to make a corset cover in a day for a youtube video. There were a lot of bumps in the project, which I cover in more detail in the video. You can watch it after midnight tonight on my channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UCYILrMNOLtyIucYE35APXDA
I actually wound up finishing it on Monday, though that was mostly due to a) not starting till 2:18pm, and b) my machines both acting up when it came to buttonholes. 

Since then, the days have again flown by. I have fitted the body of my Edwardian shirtwaist, and yesterday, I mocked up a sleeve and collar. I was going to do the buttons/buttonholes Tuesday, but naturally have no appropriate buttons in my stash. Sigh. So I'm trying to figure out where I can acquire some without going to a store. I think I will mostly make my stash lace work, though I also really really want some beading lace so I can thread my velvet ribbon through it to match the jumper! So there's a lot to figure out there. 

Once the blouse is done, I will go back to the jumper and finish that up. I'm still trying to decide if I want to attach it to that lovely pointed/shaped waistband, or if that should be a belt-like piece that is attached to the jumper straps, but is separate from the skirt. I have a couple days before I need to make that decision though. 

Oh, and I also finally tested out my hotfix rhinestone setter today, in anticipation of one of my next projects - an 1890s Elsa spirit dress, which will be covered in rhinestones. It made me really excited for that project! Though I might still go back and finish the Victorian things I had already started first... 

Umm, hi! It's been a month. I caught up on the last two weeks of posts, since that's all I can view, but I think visiting dreamwidth just sort of fell out of my mind, with so much weirdness going on. Especially since, with working at home, I think I actually take less distractions than I do when I'm in the office (reading/posting here being one of those distractions). 

So yeah. I feel like things are still plugging along here. I'm still working four days a week, just from home, and I'm still sewing. Obviously, all theatre and costuming events have been cancelled/postponed. In fact, we had started having online rehearsals for Ragtime last week in the hopes of opening in June, but that has just been pushed off to Oct. Pushing it back till then would have been terrible, since my parents and I were supposed to go to Europe then, but my mom doesn't feel comfortable with traveling overseas this year, so we are pushing that to fall 2021. If things do open up in a few months though, then she and I are going to take a nice US roadtrip instead. 

In any case, I did embroider my mom's sweater, which I mentioned in the last post, plus I made three pillows out of old embroideries (one for my parents), and I've made 10 masks (three for my parents, two for me, one for my roommate, and four for a friend who ordered them from me). I also completed my 1830s Governor Ratcliffe dress. 

Since I finished the Ratcliffe dress and hat about a week ago, I had started on my Daniel Deronda riding habit and fit my mockup for the velvet evening bodice. And then they cancelled Costume College. So those are getting put aside for the moment, because it makes me sad to work on them. I'm sure I will return to them shortly, especially since I've completed the mockup stage for one, and just need to assemble/try on mockup 1.5 for the riding habit.

But instead, for now I have started an Edwardian jumper dress. I decided on Tuesday that I wanted one, and purchased/printed/assembled the Black Snail pattern, only to find it was not at all what I wanted. So yesterday I drafted up one of the skirt patterns from Period Costume for Stage & Screen (which took me less time than taping together that pattern), and the skirt is currently mostly assembled. I'm trying to figure out how the top part of the jumper is put together -- this is the shape I'm going for, though unfortunately not in velvet. I plan to make a shirtwaist for it, too, though maybe not immediately, since the blouse I bought at Target will do just as well for now. And I should have the jumper itself finished by the end of this weekend. 

I've also been keeping up with my youtube, and have made multiple videos since my last post here, including a couple singing videos!

So anyway, that was a lot of writing. Good job if you read all of that. I'm going to try to remember to check in here at least once a week, if not more often. I hope you all are doing well!