panic in the streets of Venice
I feel like I’m never going to get this damn dress done! Hemming takes forever. I’ve got tons of trim to put on. OMG!!!11!!!111!!
Category Archives: 18th Century
Welcome to Stripey Polonaiseville
Another bandwagon jumped. This one started by Lindsey, Loren, and Leia, and the CC27 18th-century posse, inspired, iirc, by the movie The Duchess. Conversations started on LiveJournal in, I think, January, probably when the movie came out on DVD and people started obsessing over every last costume, especially the huge, poufy, stripey polonaises Georgiana and
Let me show you my obsessive documentation of boring things
It’s only a paper stomacher… The easiest thing to pattern. Just stick some paper under the francaise and draw a shape. Smooth out the lines. *Ta da* It’s a stomacher. For the actual item, I used an inner layer of white mid-weight canvas-y stuff, covered w/the pink silk on both sides and the sari fabric
Never too OTT
I was about to post a picture of trim pinned to the Carnivale gown’s stomacher and ask “is this too much?” and then I realized, no, there is no such thing as “too much” on a Carnivale gown. It’s like a Spinal Tap “none too black.” Add moar trim! Big fluffy craaazzzy trim! (Not that
Pink progress
It was kind of a girlie weekend, in more ways than three. Saturday, I did a ton of pleating and pinning and re-pleating and pinning to build the petticoat for my Carnivale outfit. I just took two widths of silk — made the back one half-again as wide, for some oomph — and stitched them
Satisfied evening
I set the sleeves into the black francaise. They fit and look decent. I see how I could have made them look better by curving in the sleeve head in the front, but it’s not unattractive as-is. Good enough for government work, as they say. The overall fit of the gown is pretty darn awesome,
I p0wn sleeves
Thanks to help from this Threads article (which is actually the cheatsheet for a full article that’s more about theory), I successfully graded a pattern that I’d scaled up from Hunnisett. I’m pretty decent at sleeves, but I usually guess and have to make three muslins to get the right fit. The Threads article showed
Look ma, no pins!
Made great progress on the Carnivale gown today, although these photos will not seem like much. However, I’ve now sewn all the bits that Kendra draped and pinned on me. The only things left on the black francaise portion are to bind the back neck edge, draft sleeves, and hem the skirt. The only semi-hard
Fiddly
Right now, I’m avoiding going back to working on the black francaise. I got the back seams done earlier, and I could totally see why sewing them by hand would have made sense. But I did it on the machine because it was a smidge faster (well, a lot faster by me) and a lot
Who’s my friend???
Kendra RULES!!! She draped a 18th-century francaise on me. It’s black dupioni silk, thus hard to photograph, but trust me, it’s great. The fit is perfect, and she pinned it all together so I just have to sew it down. Last photo has some of the contrast fabric and trim thrown about to give a
omgwtfbbq, Venetian style
We leave for Carnivale in one month and 26 days!??!!11!!!!11!!!??!!!!1! *** This freakout brought to you because I finally looked at the little counter app thingy on my iPhone. And, um, gulp, I don’t have a SINGLE STITCH of my costume done. PANIC!!!!11!!!1!!!!
Oooo, masks!
I just found these tatted lace masks on Etsy (via Instructables, where I was doing research for work, honest). That could be perfect for Carnivale! See, at Antonia Sautter’s atelier, I tried on a lace mask that fit pretty nicely over my glasses. It was intended to. And I’d thot about trying to make such
Showing off
What I wanted to find at this year’s trip to the LA Garment District was something to go with this hot pink and silver (polyester) sari I’ve had in the Stash for years: I made a sketch of my costume concept in Tara Maginnis’ drawing class at Costume College (shown at left). The idea is
Carnivale musings
So I updated my swatch book last night. Which required measuring of some yardage. And I don’t think I have enough fabric for my intended Carnivale costume. The black shantung embedded with shisha mirrors is only 4 yards of 45″ wide material, and something tells me that just won’t be enough for a robe a
Blue Caraco Jacket and Petticoat
Well, no in-progress updates or anything! Half a year later, I picked up the project again about two weeks before the Lumieres Summer Pique-nique. I wanted something new to wear, as I’d worn the same pink francaise to two other picnics at the same location already. Also, I got the idea of buying a big