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
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!!!!)
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!!
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
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
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
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
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
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
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!!!!
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
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
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
This sort of robe a la francaise held up in a polonaise would be both very pretty and quite practical for Carnivale next year. Can’t have a train or anything dragging about in the damp, and despite the potential cuteness, I don’t want to go all lolita-short. That example circa 1760s-1770s is more accurate. I