Diary of a Costumer

I was feeling exhausted most of the weekend, so didn't wind up doing much sewing. We had four caroling gigs from Thurs-Sat, I ushered a show yesterday, and I finished decorating my house on Friday (video of the decorations is on instagram). 

I didn't start my big project yet, because I want to make a quick Christmas skirt first. I picked up the fabric at the same time I bought the commission stuff a couple weeks ago, but as I was cutting it out yesterday, I realized I had forgotten to buy a zipper. So after I cut out and serged all the pieces yesterday, I ran out to Joanns on my way to the grocery store. But naturally, once I got home, there was no more sewing time left between that and the show last night. That said, I should have it all put together tonight, which is good, since I want to wear it when we go to Enchant tomorrow. (They've taken the baseball stadium and turned it into a giant light maze, so it's very instagrammy or something like that.)

But then, assuming I'm not starting the Frozen commission right away, I'm starting on my velvet gown. The thing is, I've stared at this fashion plate a ton, and I can't quite figure out what is going on with her skirt (or skirts?). Click here for the image. Is that band actually running diagonally across her skirt, tucking up only one side of the skirt? Or is it really a horizontal band, and they've just pulled her skirt up on one side? Or is her torso somehow turned completely to the side, and the pulled up part is actually the back of the skirt? I would love to hear any ideas/theories!

Little by little, I'm getting closer to finishing this bodice. Yesterday, I fixed the bertha by adding in two small pieces over the shoulders. I tried it on afterwards with the bertha pinned in place, and it seems to work. I also pressed the hem up yesterday, so that it would be easy to sew today. 

Then today, I added the lace over the pressed hem, so that I would only have to sew it once. And my silk organza arrived, so I started on the box pleating for the neckline. I finished one row of box pleating, and it is pinned in place, waiting to be handsewn onto the bodice, which I hope to be able to accomplish tomorrow, in the hour I have between work and rehearsal (probably overambitious on that one, but I'm going to work on it at lunch at work, too). Then if I have enough energy when I get home from rehearsal, maybe I can convince myself to pleat up the other strip of organza, which goes between the top of the bertha and the bodice neckline. That way I can hopefully get that sewn on with the bertha on Friday, and this project will finally be finished!

Or at least, mostly finished, since I still have to finish the sash and orders. That's going to wait until after I get a good chunk of Elizabeth Swann done, though. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll really have time to start it this weekend. I have plans Friday afternoon as well as a performance in the evening, and on Saturday I'm hosting a costume event, which will end in time for me to get to that evening's performance. Then Sunday is our final show, and I think I'm called to rehearsal in the evening. 

I completely finished the train on Thursday. I felt like I was working on it forever! So much hand-sewing. It took even longer than I had anticipated because I totally forgot about the eight bows that had to go on the train, too, so I made those and hand-sewed them all on as well. 



Friday, I slept in, and decided instead of the bodice (because I wanted to go to Joanns and look at lace options), I would work on the Snow White cape. So I patterned the cape (because I'm incapable of making anything simple), and cut it out. Each of the two back pieces took up the entire open space on the bedroom floor. Then I sat down at my serger to put red thread on it, and discovered I didn't own red serger thread. Sigh. So I showered and got all ready for the day and headed to Joanns to look at lace and pick up the serger thread. Unfortunately, that meant that by the time I got back, I had just enough time to serge the four pieces before I had to head out to my performance, and when I got back, I was too tired to sew. 

Saturday, I put the cape together and hemmed all the edges, since I wasn't lining it. I'm going to pin it closed with a sparkly brooch, so that meant the cape was done! So then I turned to repairing Mary Poppins - I cut new bones for the two open channels on the waist cincher, and spent the next hour or so reattaching all the applique edges that were peeling on the skirt, and attempting to get the weird dirt lines off the back (to no avail).

Then I turned to the ballgown bodice. I used the ruffler foot to gather up two organza strips for the sleeves, and sewed them on over the seam between the two sleeve poufs, and put a piece of the embroidered lace on top of that. I made the strips the same length all the way around, but I'm debating about shortening the length as it goes under the arm, since that part of the sleeve is shorter. Playing around with the bertha, I realized that I needed to make some sort of a base for the gathered sections to go on, so I draped the organza over the bodice on the form, and cut base pieces out of the organza. So far, I have taken three of these pieces and put the gathered/pressed organza sections on top of them. I'm basting them in place for now, and will finish the edges once I put the bertha pieces together. 

At rehearsal tonight, I ripped off the old lace I had put around the neckline, sewed on bows to the sleeves, and hand-whipped closed the two broken channels on the Mary Poppins waist cincher. So Mary Poppins is officially done! I actually won't be able to finish the bodice right away anyway, because I realized that I wanted box pleated white silk organza around the neckline, instead of lace, and naturally, I've run out. Hopefully it will be here within a few days. 

So anyway, I'm hoping to finish the last bertha panel tomorrow before rehearsal. Once those are together, and I make sure they are fitting right on the bodice, I can hem that and add the lace to the bottom, and whip the bertha on. Then all that will be left is the silk organza at the neckline! If I finish the bertha before the organza gets here, I'm moving on to Keira Knopely, which might actually happen, since I don't think I'm called to rehearsal every day this week. 

Ugh. Didn't get nearly as much done today as I wanted to, mostly because it wound up not raining, so I mowed the front and back lawns and did some weeding. At least my yard looks better, and my mower lasted through almost all of both lawns before the battery died. And since my backyard is huge, and most of it was 2ft tall, I call that a success!

On the sewing front, I did manage to dye the velvet ribbon - however, I had to pat it dry because rinsing it wanted to wash most of the color out. Since this train will hopefully never be around water anyway, it didn't seem like a big deal to me, so I went with it. I sewed down the ribbon to the box pleat ribbon, and started sewing that on. I have a little under a yard of it already sewn down at this point, and I have another few yards pinned into place (as much as I could do before running out of silk pins). It looks really great so far, but I have a feeling it may want to flip when I'm actually wearing the train down, which means I have to run a line of stitching towards the other side of the ribbon as well. Sigh. So much hand-sewing!

I also dyed more organza for the berthe, and painted the rest of my ribbon. I went with the actual Order of Charles III, which is one white stripe down the middle of the light blue moire ribbon, but part of me wishes I had copied the artist's artistic license in the portrait, where he made a middle stripe plus some narrow outer stripes. The thing is, I could find no evidence that those smaller stripes have ever been present on the Order of Charles III ribbon, so I should probably leave it as is, even though it's not as pretty. 

Tomorrow I really hope I can get all the pleated ribbon sewn on, and the waistband added, or else I'm going to be even more behind. 

I did so much work on train trimming this weekend. Friday night I got home from opening night and stayed up till 1am so that I could finish the box pleated trim. Then Saturday I sewed from about 11am-4pm, and managed to get all of my net trim cut into strips and then either gathered or ruched, depending on the trim, and I gathered my other ribbon trim before heading off to another performance. When I got home, I sewed down half of the wide net trim. Luckily, I was able to binge-watch Orange is the New Black through all of this. 

Then today after the matinee, I came home and sewed the other half of the ruched net, then started putting the rest of the trims on. I got the wide lace added, and managed to sew down both sides of the ruched ribbon on top of the net. Unfortunately, I realized that the box pleated trim will have to be sewn on by hand, so that's going to be a huge time suck, but luckily, everything else is by machine. 

I'm hoping that tomorrow after work and grocery shopping, I'll be able to sew on the rest of the machine sewn trims (gathered net with narrow velvet ribbon on top), as well as sewing the velvet ribbon on the skirt. I also want to see if the velvet ribbon will take dye, because if so, I'm also going to add it down the center of the box pleat trim before I stitch that on. I would love to completely finish the train by the time I go to sleep on Tues, because that gives me the rest of the week to do the bodice trimming, make the Snow White cape, and maybe even make the orders that go on the turquoise dress. I want it done!

Anyway, here's a picture of the train as it looks now:



By the way, does a train from this era (I believe 1866) just get pleated up to a full waistband that goes underneath the bodice?

I spent all day today sewing - in fact, it's the first day I haven't had to leave the house in a really long time, which was wonderful. I worked on the trimming of the ballgown skirt all day, and naturally, it took way longer than I thought. But it's basically done - the only thing it's lacking is narrow velvet ribbon going down the center of the ruched net trim. I clearly didn't think that one out ahead of time, but it is now on order, and should be here by next Monday. I also probably ought to sew together all the joins in my organza and my lace, since I haven't done that yet. 

It's trimmed with three rows of 5" wide gathered strips of dyed turquoise silk organza, layered with embroidered net lace from Joanns, and above that is a row of gathered net (very soft Casa collection stuff from Joanns). The net lace definitely looks bolder than I'd like (and looks even bolder in the pictures than in real life), but I'm sure once everything else has trim, it won't feel so garish. I have to admit, there's a little bit of regret adding the trim, since it was such an eye-catching color just plain. But I'm determined to replicate the portrait. 

Anyway, I thought it would be simple, but 1) my ruffler foot broke, and I spent an hour calling around to see if anyone local sold them (no), and then trying to fix it (which I did!); then 2) I didn't have enough organza already dyed and cut into strips, so I had to cut two additional strips, which then didn't have a selvage edge like the others, dye them, put a tiny narrow hem on them, and then repeat all the steps I had already already done with gathering and attaching all the rest of the organza; and 3) I likewise prepped 5 strips of the ruched net, and wound up needing six.

So I'm pretty sure I worked from about noon-10:45, with many two 1-hour breaks... My back is really sore from all that sewing now, but then again, I won't have another chance to sew till Friday, so I guess it makes up for it. 

Here's a couple pics:



During one of my breaks, I also was playing around with what to wear when at CoCo. If I'm able to finish all this trimming by mid-June, then I think will actually have time for my burgundy Elizabeth Swann PotC dress for Keira Knopely. And assuming that I do make that one, this is my line-up:
Thursday Pool Party - Designer Disney Snow White (still need to make the cape)
Friday Day - Mary Poppins, since it will be easy to teach in and to attend a dance class (need to fix boning in the waist cincher, and possibly some skirt appliques)
Friday Night - Keira Knopely (haven't even bought the fabric yet)
Saturday Day - Either the pelisse or the skating bustle
Saturday Gala - Giant turquoise ballgown of doom (needs train, bodice trimming, and Order-type accessories)
Sunday - Either the pelisse or the skating bustle 

I got the turquoise dress to a wearable state (well, except that I just remembered that the skirt doesn't have hooks and eyes yet). I did most of it yesterday - I finished fixing the back, bound the bottom, and made sleeves. Then today I finished binding the top and added lace around the neckline, which should help to hide my chemise.

I have tried the bodice on (without the skirt), and it seems to work. And I've tried the skirt on (without the hoop). So honestly, the thing I'm most nervous about is a) the hem will be too long in front, or b) it will rain going to or from the ball, and I will not fit under an umbrella.

I'm packing in the morning before heading out to Port Townsend, so I should probably get to sleep.... I'm not sure I've ever felt this unprepared for an event before...

Teaser pick from yesterday, before the neckline was done:

The bodice is coming along. On Friday, I got all my pieces cut out and flatlined, and during Friday night's show, I sewed them all together. I pressed all the seams this morning, and made self bias for the binding. Then during the first show, I made all my eyelets and put in the bones for the CB edges. One of my castmates helped me put the bodice on between shows, and it seemed to be a good fit, so I started on binding during the second show.

However, now I'm worried that wasn't such a good idea! The bodice closed all the way and didn't feel tight, but looking closer at the pictures tonight, it looks like the silk is pulling, and there are all sorts of horizontal wrinkles. I don't know if that's because it really is too tight, or just because I don't have the bones in to keep all the seams from riding up...


The other part I'm worried about is the back. This is the same bodice pattern I used for my other 1860s ballgown, but I think this corset creates more of a back bulge on me, which so far looks very evident with this bodice. In fact, it almost seems like it's making the back of the bodice ride down, which is no good, since it already seems pretty low. I think I'm going to have to be very careful with bertha placement, because I have no idea how to make the bulge go away. Any suggestions?




My aliexpress bodice jewel options also arrived today. I think the 2nd from the right is the closest to one in the portrait, though I really like the second from the left as well. Now I just have to track down options for the Order of Charles III and the Order of the Starry Cross...




During our closing show tomorrow, I plan to finish the binding and start on the boning, unless of course you think it's all way too tight and I need to take some other drastic measures first!

I actually didn't manage to completely finish the corset today, since cutting/sanding all the boning took a lot longer than I had anticipated. However, all I have left at this point is a little over 1/4 of the binding, and that's it, so I know I'll finish that quite quickly during tomorrow's show. Then I guess I'll go back to flossing the 1870s corset for any remaining downtime I have tomorrow. Or maybe I'll just read instead.

And on Monday, it's bodice patterning time! 

Yesterday, between work and rehearsal, I finished cutting out all the skirt flatlining pieces, and serged all but the front panel. Then at rehearsal, I finished a little over 3/4 of the boning channels, which was not nearly as far as I was hoping to get!

Today went pretty well, though. Between work and rehearsal, I serged the front panel, cut out the waistband in both silk and the organdy, and serged that together as well, and cut and serged pieces for a pocket for the skirt. And at rehearsal, I managed to get all of the skirt pieces put together! I started to pleat the waist while I was still there, but it just wasn't working without having it on a dressform. When I got home at about midnight, I decided to just pleat it on to the dressform, just so it would be done.

I have to admit, I'm already in love with this, even in it's totally-not-pressed, pleats-just-pinned state. The color just glows! I wish it photographed true to color - it's so much more turquoise.


Tomorrow late morning, I'm seeing Beauty and the Beast, but I'm really hoping to have enough time between that and our call-time for opening night that I can do the waistband of the skirt and mark/pin the hem. That way, I can handsew the hem while at rehearsal.