Painting lace
I gave up on the trim embroidery idea. Here’s the sordid, stupid story of this gown’s trim…
Because I couldn’t find any trim that really looked like what’s on the costume, I tried to improvise. I bought two yards of unbleached, cotton, crocheted lace and used fabric medium and acrylic paint to turn it an old gold color. This also filled in some of the lace pattern to give it a chunky look (which I wanted). Then I sewed the lace over the red fabric.
My plan was to embroider curlicues and dots over that to approximate the texture and colors of the original trim. But I hadn’t embroidered since I was a kid, and my attempt came out far more imperfect than I desired. Would have been ok for a stage costume because, from a few feet away, it had a pleasing effect. The colors and texture were right. However, up close, it looked sloppy and random.
So I ripped out all the embroidery and decided to use the gold lace by itself. To add some depth, I sewed narrow gold braid along the bottom edge. I have (not enough) gold cord that I might later use to make a criss-cross pattern over the medallions of the lace design. Also have iridescent black beads that I could add at some point. Maybe someday I’ll even practice my embroidery and further embellish to the trim. In the meantime, what I have is reasonably evocative of the actual costume, so that will have to do.
Sanding buttons
In other trimming news, I decided to sand the gold plastic buttons so they weren’t so shiny and fake-new-gold looking. This gave them a more subtle, antiqued look (that barely shows up in the photo). Not bad for 45 cent buttons.
Mom also helped me pin up the hem (never easy to do on oneself). I had cut the pattern out at the original, intended length. Being that I’m only 5’2″, that length is about 6″ too long. That was nothing new to me, and this time, I used it to my advantage. Mom pinned up the hem to a good walking length in front and left a demi-train in the back.