At the Valhalla Renaissance Faire, I wore the completed & “proper” version of my Venetian courtesan gown, this one made in a luscious raspberry-colored silk damask that I’d hunted for months to find (& oi, it wasn’t cheap! but sooooo pretty!). Sarah made the gown, same pattern she designed for the tourney version, & I
Kendra came over yesterday, & we sewed, sewed, sewed. We worked on skirts for our gowns & got to the point where we could sit on the couch, watching “Elizabeth R,” hand-sewing vast piles of black silk whilst drinking cocktails. Good times! Well, I cartridge-pleated the skirt & attached it to the bodice, so the
I’ve spent a week on these sleeves, & they’re still not done! Took three nights to trim them (piping, two kinds of trim by hand, then pearls), & a full day to figure out the stiffening for the panes & the best way to attach them. Then I redid the white silk taffeta inside puff
Who’s idea was it to make crazy complicated sleeves? Oh yeah, mine. Well, I’m chugging along… Tuesday night, piped all the panes of the slashed puffs (say that five times fast). Yeah, the girl who said she’d never pipe anything again after the Eugenie Project is on her second piped sleeves. Never say never. But
The only kind of pattern drafting I enjoy is making sleeves. Not sure why, but it’s something I feel like I can handle. Maybe because the fit isn’t as weirdly tricky as going over the bust & around the waist. There’s only the armscye/sleeve head to deal with & then it’s done. The fit is
Finally got back to some sewing this weekend, admist putting up xmas decorations, dealing with a Very Bad Cat, & discovering that our house has termites. Good times! (Not.) I’m going with trim pattern #2 in the previous post, but may intersperse that with lines of the narrow trim — depends how much time I
Sarah & Kendra came over on Saturday, & we got shit done! There was draping & cutting, & we all have bodices for our 12th Night gowns under way. I sewed my together today, but now I’m stymied on trim. The Isabella portrait has no trim on the bodice, other than a few pearl clusters
Stayed up late sewing last night. What? On a weekday? Snowballs en l’enfer? Yeah. Added some freshwater pearls to the points in the cutout cross shape of the over-sleeves on my pink Florentine gown, plus at the corners of the collar. On Sunday, I’d sewn narrow gold trim along the collar & the cuffs of
I did a little bit of sewing today. Made gathered trim for the jacket’s sleeves and attached it to one sleeve. Should be pretty fast to attach it to the next sleeve, then sew the black velvet braid on top on both sleeves. I’m doing all the trimming by machine, which is a first for
Fueled by vast quantities of Kauai coffee, I started on a new jacket for Williamsburg. Yeah, I went there. Made from this purple-shot-with-red dupioni silk in The Stash. First, I dug out the J.P. Ryan jacket pattern I’d fitted last fall in planning for the Lumieres gambling party (but abandoned in favor of the stripey
I set a strip of hook-and-eye tape in the late 16th-c. loose gown, which I started work on. Goal is to have this wearable for June A&S (yeah, yeah, planny-pants here is thinking ahead even though I’m still finishing stuff for the UK trip). Got the main body finished last night, letting it hang, and
For once (or maybe twice) in my life, I’m drawing something of a blank when it comes to trim patterns. Maybe because the outfit is outside of my usual style or maybe because I’ve been cranking through a bunch of other costumes recently. So, I’m looking to the LJ hivemind, you’re my only hope! I
It’s officially a dress because it has sleeves. Sewn on even. The croissants shoulder rolls aren’t actually sewn on in these pix, but they are now in real life. The velvet trim is sewn on neither in the pix nor in real life, it’s merely pinned down to show what I’ll be going for. Colors
Just recording weeknight progress so it feels like I’m getting somewhere…