Diary of a Costumer

Friday, I woke up bright and early, donned my Miss Pettigrew outfit, and headed to my hard-bottomed reticule class. It was a great class, and I finished my reticule! I also attended nuranar's class about self-trimming, which was so useful and informative, and jennylafleur's class on curling hair (apparently, I'm doing everything wrong, but my hair certainly does seem to hold a curl!).


Thanks to starlightmasque for taking the only pictures of me in this outfit!

After classes, I headed upstairs to re-curl my hair for the Not-ice-cream Social. Yep. I curled my hair four times within 48 hours. I wore my archery dress, which is still either my fav or 2nd fav costume I've ever made. :) My phone camera was being especially troublesome on Friday night, but I did manage to get a few blurry pics in:


Does anyone know who this is? I loved her 30's.              Kaila                                              Abby


                americanduches                                             jenthompson and Alyxx


Selfies with big hats are hard, right, vanessa_lynne?


Then of course, it was the Pink Princess party, but I only made it to 10:30 before turning in for the night. 

I had sooo much fun at the Victorian Festival in Port Townsend this weekend! Like last year, it once again fell on my and my boyfriend's birthdays (his is the day before mine). We had some crazy weather while we were there. On Friday, it was 27mph wind, so we didn't do much wandering around. In fact, as I was trying to leave the hotel in my Ravenclaw bustle, I had to go back in first to take off my hat, and second to take off the pleated tail on the bustle. So no pictures from Friday.

Saturday was so much better! The weather was almost entirely clear, besides a little rain mid-day. It was cool, but not overly cold, and we were able to take some nice pics. The seminars they offered this year didn't really interest me much at all, but I did go to the fashion show with vanessa_lynne, and headed off to the ball in the evening. Here are some pics from Saturday:


Sunday, my birthday, was marvelous. We packed up and checked out of the hotel, and then I headed over to tea with Val, Gina, and her mom. Tea was delicious, and then we headed over the to fort, and met up with my BF to hang out and take lots of pictures. It was amazing! It had turned quite windy again, and was very cold, so I unfortunately had my capelet on for most of the pictures, but they still all turned out amazingly! Thanks Gina!



The rest of the pictures can be found here.

I finished hemming the skirt, and I sewed all the hooks on the bodice. I want to try it on one more time before I sew the eyes on. I'm also waiting till I have the bodice on in order to mark the eyelets for the belt, so that will get finished tomorrow, too.

My feathers arrived in the mail today, which is good timing. I should have gotten bigger ones. 16-18" seemed big, but the 17" feathers just don't compare to the giant ones they were using at the time. Oh well - I'll make do.

I also started cutting out the pieces for the hat. I got all the silk pieces cut out, and I cut out everything I could out of buckram until I ran out. I'll have to pop into Joanns tomorrow morning before I can sew anything together - I thought I had more buckram! I should have plenty of wire, though, I hope! I think I still have some left over from when vanessa_lynne and I had our hat-making day (because I haven't touched that hat since!). This hat will have an 18" wide brim, with a 7" tall crown. I hope I got my dimensions right - I couldn't find a back view of a hat from 1831, but all the ones from the four or so years prior had really tall crowns.

I won't have all the other accessories I want by Sunday, but most of them are archery-related anyway, so that's okay. 

I figured out my ruff! I cut a strip of organdy, tea-dyed it, and tapered the ends. Then I hemmed one edge, gathered up the other edge, encased it in bias tape, and hand-sewed the tape into the neckline.

I also stitched down the piping on the neckline, hemmed the sleeves, and started to sew the buttons on the braiding. And I painted a watered-down coat of "sand" over my boots. I think they're a lot closer to the bodice fabric color now, which makes me a lot happier.

Unfortunately, Joanns was out of the size 3 hooks and eyes when I went today. So unless they call me that they've gotten them in by tomorrow after work, I'm almost definitely going to have to go with size 2. I hope they hold!

I feel like I worked forever today on the archery dress, and I don't feel like I'm too much farther along. I made piping, or at least some piping. (I think I'm going to have to make more, but I only had about 90" of cording.) I did wind up taking apart the sleeves to insert the piping and lace above the elbow, because I think it would have looked messy if I just sewed it on top. I also decided on which lace to use for the shoulders, and cut and gathered that.

I tried on the bodice again when working on trim placement, realized that a) I needed to take up part of the shoulder seam, and b) I think I'm going to have to pad my bust, which is really weird to me. I'm getting a weird line in my center bust because of the busk of my corset - not sure how they managed to mask this in the early 1830s, when they wore corsets with big wooden busks in them. I know the Victorians padded - maybe they padded in the 30s, too? I did get my trim placement figured out, stitched together the trim layers, and stitched all that on, too. The whole day, I was just waiting for the moment when I would run out of my ivory and my dusty blue thread, both of which I had almost none of at the top of the day. Somehow, though, through a very vigilant use of various bobbin threads, I managed to make it the whole day with just enough thread (that said, I will definitely have to stop at Joanns after work tomorrow).

I'm going to pipe the CF opening, as well as the shoulder seams. And I think I'll be using hooks and eyes to close it, because I have no idea what else would make sense. I also have to figure out what I'm going to use for the ruff around the neck. I don't know that I have enough organdy left, and then I would have to tea-dye it to make it ivory. But otherwise, I would have to use lace, because using the silk left from the skirt doesn't seem like it makes sense. Plus, I have no idea which lace I would use - there are so many already in this bodice. If you can believe it from looking at the pictures, the lace on the bodice front and at the elbow is actually the same - it started out as 5-6" wide lace with scallops on both edges, and it is left over from my chiffon and lace Edwardian gown from a few years ago (as is the lace at the shoulders). On the bodice, I stitched down the middle so that the scallops would just peek around the braiding I layered on top. The lace on the sleeve puffs is a vintage lace I picked up at some estate sale.

And here's the pictures!



I also painted my boots today. The color looked totally right as I was mixing it, but now I'm worried that the blue is really way too turquoise. Maybe I'll wind up brushing some sand color over the light blue before sealing them.

I worked on the ruffle today. I got two more panels embroidered, plus I've painted about 1/3 of it. I also went to Joanns and bought the wrong twill tape for the commission. :( But I did find a good braid for the archery bodice! I think I may switch to the archery bodice once I finish painting this section. If I somehow finish it before next Sunday, there's a SITU event I could wear it to. That said, though, it's kind of a long shot, since I haven't started on the sleeves or trimming the bodice. I still have to paint my shoes, too! (Does fabric paint work on elastic, btw? I know jenthompson had recommended sharpie-ing the elastic, but I couldn't find one that matched.) I also won't have time to make my hat, and the feathers I ordered for it won't even be here by next week. Hmm. It still might be fun, though. :)

In theatre news, we've posted our auditions for 1776, and have a batch of people already scheduled for slots. We also secured a really good venue. I'm so excited! This is really happening!!

While I've mostly been working away on the two 1830s outfits, I have also done a little bit more work on the 1860s handsewn bodice, whenever I take the bus towards downtown (for some reason, I get naseous if I try to do anything while sitting in any seat except in the bend, and only that bus has a bend). I am now officially done with buttonholes! Next up is sewing on the buttons, which I know will go much faster. Then I actually have to try it on with a corset and mark my side seams. Here's a pic from before I ironed off my buttonhole markings.



( Today's 1830s progress (with pictures!) under the cut. )
I have a question for those of you who are knowledgeable about the 1830s - if there is trim making a v-shape in the front of the bodice, and it heads to the back around the shoulders, would it go into another v in the back, or just continue along the top of the back of the bodice? In my case, it would be the ruffle with the corded edge.
For example:

I worked a lot on the skirts today. I finished the waistband on the archery skirt, so now that's just waiting for the hem. I also worked a ton on the orange gala gown skirt. I sewed the organza panels together, hemmed the organza, sewed the cording on the hem and then realized it was totally wrong. So then I spent a couple hours unpicking all my stitches on the cording. I pinned my hem on the taffeta, marked where the cording actually was supposed to go, and sewed on two rows of cording. I also sewed the waists of the two layers together, and gathered them.



Below the cording, there will be two 7.75" layers of ruffles, and there's a giant bow at the top of the swoop, which is why it looks so weird now. (I'm also not sure why the cording is flipping apart in the center - I might have to tack that). But I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out what to use to get that rainbow trim. There's a store 30 mins away that has a trim that might work, but it's $6-8/yd, and I need almost 10 yds, and I think that's too far out of the budget. I tried just stitching with rainbow metallic thread, which wanted to pucker the fabric, and I tried painting, which looks fine from far away but looks crappy up close. Any suggestions?

The orginal plate, and my little painting experiment pinned to the skirt:

Apparently I went crazy, so I decided to finish the corded petticoat today. 49 rows of cording in all. I had to add a 7.5" wide top piece for length, since the cording shortened it so much! And naturally, I got to what I thought were my last two rows, and ran out of cording, so I had to make a mad dash to Joanns. (Though I then wound up doing four more rows of cording.) I like how it looks, though! I haven't starched it yet. That, and adding the hooks and eyes at the waist will wait till a bit closer to when I'm actually wearing it, which probably won't be for quite a while.



And that wasn't the only thing I got done today, too! I had a good mail day, and my dyeable flats for the gala gown arrived, as did my new Fugawees. Unfortunately, I had to exchange the Fugawees for a wider size, so those have already begun their journey back to FL. But I did dye the flats! They're very orange. Hopefully not too orange, since the shoes in the original fashion plate were much brighter than the dress as well. I also bought ribbons to match.



I also started on the archery dress skirt. The two panels are cut out, the side seams are sewn, and I have pinned all the pleats, so they're ready to be sewn. I think I might have the whole thing finished tomorrow, minus the hem (which will have to wait until I make another petticoat, plus I want my Fugawees back before I hem). Not sure, though, since I'm really hoping my BF and I will finally go see The Imitation Game. Plus, my parents' gift to me of Ticket to Ride arrived today, too, so I think a round of that is in order. 

Please help me decide what fabric to use for my archery dress.

Initially, I was thinking I would use this blue/gold shot silk taffeta for the bodice, and an ivory silk taffeta for the skirt. But all the fabric stores around here struck out on the ivory silk today. One had a sort of light tan silk for 9.99 (just slightly darker than the brocade background, pictured below), but that was the closest.

So, that means I either have to buy ivory silk online for like $16/yd plus shipping, or use the silk brocade from my stash. The color is right, but I'm not in love with the look. Here's a pic:


My other option is to do wool instead. I have a periwinkle wool that I can use for the bodice, though I would still have to purchase the ivory wool for the skirt, and I'm not sure how much that would be. I had a bit of ivory wool to use as an example in this pic, though:


So, which should I do?
[Poll #1993997]

Just as a reminder, this is the dress (on the right):