Tired
I should be sewing, but I don wanna. Put sleeves on the stripey thing, feel like that’s huge, and now I’m all tuckered out.
Starting into stripeyland
I’m not making any promises, but I did start something today. I mocked up a polonaise bodice — based on ye olde Butterick not-very-accurate-but-darnit-it-fits-me bodice I used for Cosi Fan Tutte and the blue caraco. Modified the front for no stomacher (for the caraco, it was a zone, so I now I have another variation).
Venetian Carnevale Francaise Gown
Photos from Venice, Italy, in February 2009 during Carnivale. Also, here’s a costume video shoot of me. It features my mother and step-father, all at Campo San Zaccaria. Click the image below to play or click this link — Trystan’s carnivale costume video. The video is about two and a half minutes long, and the
whew
It’s done. All hemmed, trimmed, even skirt hooks and miscellaneous tacking. Now it’s late, my back is killing me, I’m going to bed. But the gown does look damn good, if I do say so myself (also, it’s done just shy of 2 weeks before we leave — BOOYAH!!! m/ !!1111!!!!)
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!!
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
What dreams may come
This idea is brought to you courtesy of strange dreams about CC27. Kevin and Radar were each trying to get me into their own masquerade entries, both very complicated and strange. Kevin’s had s’thing to do with machinery he was testing for work and demonstrating it on stage with lights and costumes. Radar’s featured interpretive
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
1590s Ruff
Closeup of the finished ruff, worn at SCA 12th Night 2009 — complete photos from the event (and full outfit images) on Flickr.