Diary of a Costumer

Hmm... Apparently I never did any CoCo wrap-up posts this year. I had so many costume events in August that I completely forgot. Whoops!

So here's part one of a brief wrap-up, assuming I can remember everything. 

I arrived Wednesday into Long Beach, met up with a few other ladies (Sarah, Britta, and Patricia), and we drove (in our super fancy Infiniti rental SUV) to the Queen Mary. We changed into our Titanic-era clothing, and spent a few hours there. We dined in the restaurant, then did a self-guided tour all around the ship, taking a ton of pictures as we went (so many pictures, that by the end of it, my phone had died!). It was awesome. We got a lot of stares and complements, of course, and our pictures turned out sooo good! I would love to do something like this again. Here are some pictures:





We changed out of our costumes and left Long Beach around 8:30, I think, stopping for groceries on our way up to Woodland Hills. The next day, DodiRose, Sarah, Britta, and I went off to Burbank to check out the vintage-ish shops in the area. We went to Unique Vintage and Besame, among others, before heading back to Woodland Hills to change for the checking in and the pool party. That evening, I wore my burgundy silk Regency dress. I was pleased with the dress, but I wish I had styled my hair differently, as I don't think the pictures of me look very flattering. 



Friday morning, I took a limited class that they should not have allowed me to sign up for. I signed up for Hand Stitches in Millinery during mid-registration, but it overlapped by 30 mins with the class I was teaching (which I didn't notice until like 2 days before CoCo). Combined with the fact that that class was running waaay behind schedule, I learned about 2-3 stitches. It was a good class otherwise, though. I ran behind in the Making Royal Orders class I taught, too, because I forgot to factor in the time it would take to distribute materials (which was like 20 mins). That said, I saw a bunch of my students wearing their royal orders for the gala, and I got lots of good feedback on it, so I think it was still a success. I watched some of Jennifer's Dressing the Silhouette class before going to grab some lunch, before my shoot with quincy134  (it was so nice that she did that!) and I finished off the class portion of the day with Jenny-Rose and Abby's Pomatum or Hairspray class, which was really cool to watch. During the day, I wore my 1890s Ice Cream Parlour shirtwaist and wool skirt. 



Friday evening was when our Titanic group decided to wear all of our costumes. I loved the turnout on this! All my past costume groups tended to fizzle out, but we had nearly 20 people in this group, and everyone looked wonderful. It did make it really difficult to round everyone up for photos, though, and I know we missed at least one or two people in the big group photo, which is really too bad. Some of us made movie reproductions, others opted for costumes of the era, and we even had one person dress as the iceberg! Naturally, we took a bunch of pictures. After a quick tour of the marketplace, several of us gathered for champagne, cupcakes, and chatter in our room - it was nice to host a small room party!  






I'll do the rest of CoCo in another post, since this is already really picture heavy. 

I finished all the theatre sewing I could yesterday. I don't have the fabric yet for the faux waist cinchers that make up the waistbands of the aprons, but the aprons are basically done (one of them needs trim hand-sewn on, which I hope to do today). I also altered the sleeve poufs for Cinderella, added clear straps for Cindy's bodice, and made arm poufs for Mermaid.

And I finished my sleeves for the Regency dress. They took way longer than I had anticipated, because it took me a while to wrap my brain around the fitted inner sleeve. I don't know why. I think maybe because it's been a while since I made a one-piece fitted short sleeve? No idea... But anyway, they're done, including all the binding on the scallop parts, and I used two layers of the silk organza for the poufs, which I think is the perfect level of opacity. I think they came out really cute!



I took a break from the Regency dress to do all the theatre sewing, and to allow friends to weigh in on whether the Regency dress needed the embellishments around the skirt. Naturally, everyone told me it did. Gah! I don't have time for this. And I possibly don't have the fabric. So instead of diving right into that, I'm going to hem the skirt as is (hopefully tonight, after a fitting for the show and getting groceries). Then if I have time for the embellishments after finishing my gala gown, I'll go back to the Regency. But at least it will be done for now. 

I also think I picked how I want to embellish my gala gown. It uses a little of the elements of my inspiration dress, but makes them a bit easier (I hope), and less prone to looking tacky (fingers crossed). This is my new inspiration image, though I will probably also pull from some other looks, possibly including my original inspiration:

I got a ton of work done on the Regency dress on Friday, which was surprising, since I didn't even start on it till about 5pm. I put all the bodice pieces together, including the piping, assembled the skirts, made a piped waistband (instead of doing a separate belt, like in the pattern), and sewed the sections together. I totally changed the gathering pattern that was suggested by the pattern - I thought it made for a much earlier Regency-era look (all the gathers tightly done in the CB). I spread them out, and gathered the front a little too (after taking in the bodice so much, I had some excess skirt width). 

Saturday, I went to a Regency costume event wearing my navy blue swiss dot from 2016 because I didn't want to risk my silk pelisse in the rain. When I came home, I decided to try on the new dress, since I was already wearing all the right undergarments. It turns out that, even though I made the lowest neckline option offered in the pattern, it was way too high. I cut it down by about 1 5/8" in the front, probably about 1.25" or so in the back, and about .5-.75" over the shoulders. Then I piped the neckline. 

I also marked the hem length, and I have enough excess length to either take three 5/8" tucks around the bottom of the skirt, or to cut off the excess and use it for ruched trim. I haven't decided yet what to do, since it will depend on how much fabric I wind up with for trim after I do the sleeves. At minimum, I want one row of ruching, and then I'll either do the tucks or another row of ruching, and I haven't decided which yet.

Last night, I sewed down the neckline piping and mocked up the sleeve in the pattern. I'm not doing any of the sleeve embellishment options that are in the pattern, and the sleeve seemed way too small for what I was trying to do. So I think I'm going to make one more mockup with a much larger sleeve, and see if that works, or if I should just give up on my idea and do something simpler/smaller. I have rehearsal today through Wed, though, so I probably won't have much progress in the next few days. 

I also had a case of CADD this weekend, and did a test of things for my gala dress. First, I tested whether I should use satin fabric with a grid pattern of metallic silver thread, vs actually weaving strips of ribbon together. The satin fabric won out, so hopefully I'll be able to pick up some this week. I tested it on a heavy satin twill from Joanns, which looked nice, though seems awfully expensive for poly! I also tried dyeing one of my feather boas with tea to make it ivory, and it worked! So I dyed all 7 boas. I blow-dryed them for a while, but I need to spend a little more time fluffing them with the blow dryer, which I will probably do once I finish the Regency dress. 

I had just enough time to fit my mockup yesterday between work and heading to the movie theatre. It was waaay too big. I didn't realize how much smaller my bust measurement was in my Regency corset, and so I had cut it to my uncorseted and Victorian corset bust size (which is basically the same), but which is about 2 sizes too large for the Regency measurement. So anyway, I think I wound up taking in the bodice by about 5" or so, mostly under the arms, though I also took a pinch out of the back/side-back curved seam. I also took out about .75" of the shoulder width, since it would have put the armseye seam way too far out.

It's possible that I may be able to use the mockup pieces as the lining, but I have a feeling I might have to recut. Oh well. I have about 2.5-3 hours for sewing this evening, so I'm hoping to get all the bodice pieces cut out and maybe sewn together. I think I would like to pipe the side-back seams, so that may delay me a little, but first I have to figure out whether or not I actually have enough fabric for as much piping as I would prefer (side-back seams, neckline, sleeve bands, sleeve ribbon things, belt).

Speaking of the belt, this pattern calls for a separate belt. But I feel like I've seen Regency dresses more commonly with a band between the bodice and skirt, as opposed to a separate belt. Is this true?

Brief change of sewing plans. Although I was planning to jump into the s-bend corset, I've signed up to do a pattern test for a new Laughing Moon Regency dress, so I'm switching gears to that. Or at least, I will be shortly. I want to finish cutting out the mockup of the corset and then I plan to sew it together, because I don't want to lose any of the pieces. I've cut out about 2/3 of them so far, I think, since I really didn't get any sewing time last week.  Once that is assembled, it will be put aside for the regency dress. 

Ideally, I'd love to whip it up really quickly. I'm going to a Regency event on Saturday, so if I can get it wearable by then, that would be fabulous! Of course, naturally, I'm still torn on just what I want to do. I have a piece of red/black changeable silk taffeta that I've had in the stash for a few years, and it is only 4 5/8 yds, so it's almost definitely enough for this, but not enough for basically any other era. So that's what I'm leaning towards. But at the same time, I'd really like a versatile day-to-evening dress that I can add long sleeves to, if I want to. And it seems like there's more cotton dresses like that than there are silk. I know as of a couple weeks ago, Joanns still had that semi-sheer dobby stripe, but I don't really want a white dress for this. In fact, I found a green dress that I kind of love, but then again, I don't look good in that shade of green. 

Naturally, all this indecisiveness is really unconducive to actually finishing this project by Saturday morning... That said, I only have rehearsal one night this week (though I am at least planning to see one movie this week) so who knows what might happen!

These are a few of the dresses I'm most inspired by right now:

I feel like I made almost nothing this year. I honestly think I did too much theatre for one year, and the past few months, I've just felt very worn out. That, combined with working all year (instead of being unemployed for 8 months like I was last year) means very little sewing actually got done. 

But this is what I did actually manage to do:

I completed the green wool bustle gown. Most of this was done in 2016, but I think I did the neckline dickey area and the hem in 2017. I also made an adjustable length quilted petticoat that I used for this dress and my skating dress, and decorated the hat. And apparently I never took any pictures of the quilted petticoat. 


Fur-trimmed skating dress + trimming an old vintage hat


Finished my crewel-work 18th c pocket


Designer Disney Snow White


1860s corset


1860s Giant Turquoise Ballgown, which also included making royal orders and a headpiece. I made this in two parts, completing the base dress by the beginning of April, and then making the train and trimming it in the lead-up to Costume College. 


Belle-inspired jumper dress


Regency Laughing Moon Pattern-test Pelisse


Elizabeth Swann


Rose's Deck Dress from Titanic


Two Halloween skirts


Velvet Regency spencer


Reversible Disney tote bag, Thumper, Dumbo, Dr. Who Scarf


Plus a commission for altering a Zouave jacket and making another Victorian jacket, and 14 little girls playdresses and 2 skirts for etsy orders.




This post has made me realize that I haven't put anything from this year on my website, and I never did a CoCo wrap-up post for Friday through Sunday, either, or completed outfit posts for Elizabeth Swann or the Turquoise Ballgown. Whoops. I should probably do those! 

 I was determined to finish the pelisse last night. I only had about an hour to work on it during the day, but when I came home from seeing Sister Act last night, I went straight into the sewing room to finish. 

I did a machined hem, with the cotton batting inside the bottom inch. I did two rows of stitching higher on the hem, too, to represent where a second padded row should be, but since it's not actually padded, it doesn't really show up. Maybe that's something I'll change in the future, but I doubt it. I also added my tassel/button trim at the CB, inspired by the extant one.

And here it is:

I got about 3/4 of the hooks and eyes attached, of those that I already had. And I stitched closed the lower front of the pelisse. But unfortunately, that was all I had time for today. 

I'm hoping to be able to swing through Joanns on my way home tomorrow, but since I also have to go to the grocery store, that likely won't leave time for sewing. It's tempting to put both errands off till Friday, and come home and do my hem instead, since that's the last "big" part of the pelisse left. I just want to finish it and move on to trimming the turquoise gown!

The pelisse is nearing completion. I've worked on it a ton this weekend, and at this point, all I have left is the hem (or hem treatment, since I haven't decided if I'm going to do the puffed rows that are on my inspiration), stitching or tacking down the facings, making the belt, and finishing off the wrist bands with buttons and buttonholes. Hopefully I'll be able to do all that tomorrow, though I do also have to mow the lawn and hopefully take Lion to get his nails trimmed. 

Oh, and I also need to do the closures down the front, but I'm not quite sure what to do there. Were pelisses ever worn without a dress underneath? I'd really love to wear this with just a petticoat, since that is a) less to pack for CoCo, and b) less heat in Socal. Obviously, that means I would need closures all the way down the front. However, my inspiration pelisse has no visible closures. Would they have used hooks and eyes, and is there a good way to do that down the front of the skirt, where there won't be any tension? Or are there any other closure options anyone recommends?

Thanks for your advice!

I wanted to start on the pelisse in the 1.5 hrs I had between work and rehearsal today, but first I had to put several hooks and eyes on skirts laying on my sewing table, then clear off the rest of the sewing table. Which naturally meant that after ironing the mockup fabric, I ran out of time. I have to go grocery shopping tomorrow afternoon, so there likely won't be time then either. But there's a possibility that I won't be called for rehearsal on Wed, which would be awesome, because then I could see a show a bunch of friends are in, and have a little time beforehand to sew. And this weekend I'll have a four-day weekend, so my goal is to sew for pretty much the entire time, and finish the whole pelisse. If I do, I think there's a chance I might get to the Elizabeth Swann dress before CoCo.