Diary of a Costumer

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! 

After a super productive Friday, I had no time at all for sewing yesterday, and didn't get much done today, either. I painted my order ribbon with two more narrow stripes down the sides (which is how it looks in the portrait, but not how the Order of Charles III ribbon actually is, so I decided to add to the wide stripe I had already painted). And while that was drying, I finished painting the medals. Such tiny details - I wish I had smaller brushes, because while I think I got the Starry Cross medal pretty darn close, I couldn't put much detail on the Charles III medal. And then I made the bow tops for them, and I put pin backs on so that they would be easily removable.

In the picture, the top one is the Order of the Starry Cross, which started as a cabochon backing for a pendant, an the bottom is the Order of Charles III, which was a blank gold medal. 


I was hoping to be able to try on all the gala stuff, so that I could figure out the sash length and get the hooks and eyes on the train waist, but I ran out of time before rehearsal, so that will have to wait till Tuesday. 

I also dug out my extant 1890s bodice with the huge sleeves, which I will be bringing to show my class, and washed the organdy so that I can cut out all the pieces for the students.

So here's a couple questions for the hivemind -  
1) We're making an 1890s sleeve as part of my class. There are tons of 1890s sleeve shapes out there - should I do an 1890s upper sleeve puff, which would work either for an evening sleeve or paired with a lower sleeve, or should I do a leg-of-mutton sleeve? I'm leaning towards the former because they require less fabric. 

2) Also, because there are so many sleeve shapes out there, I was thinking of providing drawings of a couple shapes in my handout, and not providing a huge paper pattern (especially since I will be doing all the fabric cutting ahead of time). Is this fairly normal for classes? I can't remember. 

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 the 30 mins I had free between work and rehearsal sewing! I didn't accomplish much, but I got the two taffeta panels for the train assembled, serged the top and bottom, and did the two side seams  to attach the organza to the taffeta. There won't be time to sew tomorrow, but maybe I'll have another 30 mins on Wed?

I wore the giant turquoise ballgown on Saturday night for the Victorian Festival ball in Port Townsend. Overall, it was a success, but it definitely wasn't perfect.

For one thing, I'm really glad I made a modesty panel - I don't know if my corset was not laced down enough or what, but I had about .5" gap in most of the lacing. And then the weirdest thing is that from the waist down, it couldn't lace closed at all. I think there was a good 2" open at the very bottom. I'm not sure why that is - I took the pattern from my old ballgown, which is worn over the same cage crinoline (though I was wearing it with one less petticoat). Anyway, I don't really think there's any way to fix that, even for version 2, but if anyone has any suggestions, please send them my way!

The only other weird thing was that the top of the bodice kept trying to ride down in front. I know it wasn't the waist shifting, and I had bones in the CF that went up to the bottom of the bust, but above that, the bodice wanted to scrunch down, which showed my chemise a little on top. Again, not sure how to fix that. The scrunching will be hidden by the bertha, and I do plan to add more bones in the seam allowances, but I don't think that will solve it riding down.

Other than that, though, I loved it. It was very comfortable, and despite the small sweep in back, it was just fine to dance in. I'm excited to see what all version 2 will hold, though I'm probably going to take a small break, and make Designer Disney Snow White before I go back to it.

Here's pics!

I decided to do a couple tweaks to the bodice back. I'm adding in 1" of width in the shoulder straps so that they can sit a little higher up my shoulders, and I'm also adding in a piece that will add 2" of height in the top of the CB, tapering out to nothing by the shoulder seam. I've made up the pieces to be inserted, but haven't had time to actually put them in yet. In fact, I didn't even get much done during the show yesterday. I got most of two boning channels stitched into the CF, but that's it. So I have a feeling that most of the bodice will have to be unboned on this wearing.

I have so much left to do on this bodice in the next three days, and of course, I have rehearsal tomorrow and Thursday, so that leaves me with very limited time! I still have to put in the new pieces, finish the binding on the top and bottom edges, and do sleeves and at least some kind of bertha, or it will look very plain (and the added piece in back will be really obvious). Not sure when I'm supposed to do all this!

I finished the base skirt for the ballgown. After seeing Beauty and the Beast, I came home, messed with my pinned pleats beacuse I had pinned the skirt waist about 1.25" too big, and sewed on the waistband. Then I put it back on the form and started to mark the hem. I had been wanting to make a ruffly organdy petticoat for this dress, but I realized that by putting my Victorian child ruffled petticoat over my regular hoop petticoat (which has one ruffle around the bottom), the ruffles come fairly close to looking like one big ruffled skirt. So at least for the Victorian ball, that's what I'm going with.

Anyway, I managed to get my hem pinned and pressed before I had to leave for opening night. And then somehow backstage, I sewed like the wind, and was able to sew my entire hem! And since I consider myself a very slow hand-sewer, I'm quite surprised and proud of that. So that means that other than the hook and eyes at the waist, it's done! Or I should say, the base skirt is done. Once I get the bodice to a wearable state, I will go back and add all the lace and organza. I'm almost sad about that, because the skirt is so gleamingly turquoise as is.

Of course, since tomorrow is a two-show day, now I'm a little worried I won't have enough to do backstage. I'm going back to the corset, which needs the last 3 or so boning channels put in, about 16 bones cut to size and inserted, and the binding done. Hopefully, I'll finish that all tomorrow, though I'm not sure what that would mean for Sunday's show sewing. But it does mean that I should be able to draft out the bodice and actually be able to work on that at home next week.