Miss Philomena

Getting closer with the yellow dress! Originally I wanted to trim it with a nice cornflower blue, but I haven't been able to find ribbon the right color here, and I don't have time to go to either Philly or NYC and pick some up. So I'll just go with white instead, It'll be the flip of all those sheer white gowns trimmed in yellow.

So today I did the overskirt and started working on ruffles. I have the ruffle for the overskirt ready to be put on it, but I haven't pinned it on yet, let alone sewn it. But have a picture anyway! Or better yet, two~

 

I can't decide yet if I want to bustle the overskirt or not. I think it'll have to wait until I have my ruffles and basque to decide, so I can see the finished look.

Also, you can see just how sheer the fabric is in the bodice. I need a corset cover to hide my black corset.

So I discovered working for a couple hours in the hot attic while still sick is a bad idea. Still feeling a little shakey, even an hour later. x_x

But I started on my next project, a summer bustle gown, even though summer is almost over. Summer weather isn't, at any rate. I'm using this fabric, which is a yellow and shiny sheer plaid. (Check? Windowpane? What exactly is this pattern?) I dug out my bustle skirt pattern and somehow my side back piece is missing. dklgjsklgnlskdjglsdkng So I cheated and just cut a slightly longer side front for the side back and all is good. The center back is just a full width of fabric, like I usually cut, though I still need to trim down the top into a curve. I cut this one short too, with only a sweep rather than a long train like I usually do. I've only got the back half of the skirt so far, and because it's so sheer I did French seams for it.

I plan to put ruffles the whole way up the back before I add the front half of the skirt. I just need to decide how long I want the ruffles to be. There's going to be one deep ruffle going the whole way around the bottom of the skirt, then tiers over it on the back. I'm not sure if they should be all the same size or get smaller as they go up, but I might play around and pin some of different sizes on. We'll see.

In other parts of the dress, I think I'm going to do a bodice with a belt and a basque, and I'm still thinking about what to do with the skirt front.

( a slightly crappy pic of the plain skirt back )

Playing around with honeycomb smocking for a sun dress~ I got the idea from koshka_the_cat's 1840s gown, but I wanted an increasing size of diamonds on the top of the skirt, so I printed out some polar graph paper. This is the 1/5" scale, a little over a quarter circle to start with. I have a lot of math to do before I can start on the actual dress. I want the finished skirt to be a full circle and the finish smocking is about half the length of what it started at, so I'm probably going to do an eight panel gored skirt to get the finished circle shape. Here goes nothing!

I'm really happy with how my Titanic dinner gown is coming along. It looks awesome already, so I've got high hopes for getting pretty close to done tomorrow. \o/

When I first started planning this outfit I'd thought about doing a bandeau for my hair, but then I remembered something I've been in love with for ages. In the Priscilla Bead Work Book, scanned and posted by the Antique Pattern Library there's a Juliet cap made with pearls of various sizes. I didn't have pearls, but I had a ton of seed beads in a lovely bronze color, and with the addition of some faceted beads of varying sizes, I made a Juliet cap for myself.



( a couple more pictures )

The green dress is almost finished. I just need to do the last bits of tacking down the binding in the bodice and add the closures and buttons. The skirts are completely finished, and even have actual skirt hooks for closing, so I won't be safety pinning myself into it for once.

I'm about go to start on the white and red dress too. I think all the fabric is done drying by now. I also decided rather than try and find white eyelet with red embroidery, it's just going to be a fully white dress with a red sash.

Then my sari for my Titanic dinner gown should be arriving tomorrow, so fingers crossed~ It's only taken me a month and a half to get it, after the first one I ordered was damaged in processing and I had to pick out a new one. Dx

And finally~

I'm teaching a class at Dress U, first thing on Friday afternoon, 4pm-7pm. It's how to make knit beaded Victorian (and earlier and later) purses. Only two people signed up for it, but that should make things go faster and easier, I hope. Dress U itself says you can't get into the class day of, but I was planning on making some extra kits for it anyway, so I have no problem accepting extra people as long as they pay for it. We'll see, I guess~

I decided a couple days ago, rather than killing myself trying to make the copper and blue gown, and a Titanic gown as well in just about two weeks, I dug through the stash (though not really because it was on the top of the pile) and pulled out my green striped natural form outfit.

The underskirt and overskirt were already mostly done. I just had to finish the waistbands of both and tack down the overskirt's pleats, which I've done, and hem the underskirt, which I haven't yet. I have bound the hem though, so I just need to turn it up now. The bodice was also about half done. I'd pieced the back, the sleeves, and the collar already, and pinned the flatlining to the front, so I basted the fronts, sewed the darts, and on it went to the back. I haven't set the sleeves in yet because they aren't lined yet, and the collar will get sewn on when I do the neckline. I'm not really doing much in the way of trim for this outfit, since the fabric is already so loud. I think just gold buttons down the front, and I'm toying with using some gold piping I have along the neckline and bottom of the bodice. I'm still deciding on that.

Anyway, the whole point of this gown when I started it last year was to go with the metallic green leather hat I bought from The Blonde Swan last year at Costume Con. So that means once I finish sewing I'll be set for the Mad Hatter tea party~

For my blue and copper dress I need a short bustle, one that won't poke out below the planned knee length skirt. I was all set to start one from scratch when I remembered I had one I started a few years ago. I was working with this Ageless Patterns bustle pattern, but of course like most of their stuff, the directions are nonexistent, and when I couldn't make it work right, I gave up and into the unfinished pile it went. (Looking back now I think part of the problem was using hoop steel instead of springs, so it wouldn't curve like it was supposed to, but that's not the point.)

Anyway, I pulled it out in it's unfinished state, which looked like this.


As you can see, it's basically a series of vertical bones.

( What I did to it was to add two horizontal bones, and here's what it looks like now. )

I actually sewed today \o/ I've got most of a teens corset pieced, and I'll probably do the last bit of assembly tonight after a dinner break, and tomorrow I need to run out and pick up some tape to make boning casings with.

I'm using jenthompson's corset pattern, since it's not complicated, and it's not super tiny, which means I didn't need to practically double the waist measurements. Always a plus.

I didn't want to make it plain white, because that's boring, but I still needed to keep it a light color so I can make myself a white afternoon dress. I was originally digging through the stash hoping for something in a light pink, but then I discovered an old piece of lilac/silver cotton lamé. It's a fairly thin fabric so I fused it to some plain cotton to give it enough strength.

I'm hoping to get the corset finished tomorrow, so I can then start on a dress for the Titanic dinner at Dress U Tuesday, as I'll be away Wednesday to Sunday.

CADD is hitting and it's hitting hard. It tends to come when I'm past the halfway point of a project, and all I want is to play with the next pretty thing. I think the only reason why I haven't started working on my blue striped summer bustle is the fact that I haven't unpacked my 1872 bustled crinoline yet, and I need to actually measure out the skirt lengths, because I'm not doing a train for this dress. And by no train I mean I'm probably going to do just a sweep, about 4" long in the back. I just need to see by how much I need to shorten my 7-gore pattern side back and back pieces, because I drafted it for about the 16" train as seen in my icon. (Yes I realize I could just cut the back 12" shorter. But I want to double check.)

I also want to make a nicer petticoat than the plain white one I wore at CosCon. I have a few yards of eyelet, so I'll probably use that. I think I'm going to do a yoke for that to keep the very top of the bustle smooth.

But I think most of all I'm in an accessories mood. I just dug through a bag of vintage gloves I have and pulled out four pairs that fit me. One pair is white fabric, two pairs are kid leather, one white and one pink, and a lovely suede pair that are burgundy. I'm also really itching to make some more hats. IDK, they're just so much fun. I've got a blue straw hat I picked up a while back from Goodwill that I'm going to use to make a little topper hat to go with my summer bustle. And even though I don't really have anything to wear with it I'm in the mood to make a ridiculously large hat, either something like the giant purple hat Kate Winslet wore in her first scene in Titanic, or a large high-crowned 1780s hat. We'll see, I suppose~

so scrapbook isn't working with the lj.app or something? Not cool, LJ. Your force me to email my pictures to myself just so I can upload them here. 365 pics will have to wait until LJ decides to behave again.

But anyway, stripy natural form update! Okay technically it's not an update because I haven't done anything else, but I took a picture! :D It still needs hemming, but that shouldn't take too long. And then all I really need to do is the bodice! I still need to cut the flatlining for that before I can piece it. I'm flatlining the main body with the same green striped cotton I used for the underskirt, and I'm gonna bagline the sleeves with probably some white silk taffeta I have in my stash. And I'm still trying to decide exactly how I want to trim this. Because the silk itself is such a bold design, I think I might only do some ivory lace around the neckline and end of the sleeves. And I think I'm gonna do either ivory or gold buttons on the bodice too.

( big pic )

Now, for a bit of planning~ I think the next thing I'm going to work on is a summer bustle gown a la the 1872 dress I posted the other day. I was originally thinking of some type of floral print like the original, but then I remembered I have a lovely blue striped cotton gauze in my stash. It always comes back to stripes, what can I say? So not only to I want a nice light summer gown, I want it for something specific. That being Belvidere's Victorian Days this September. Which also means I'll probably need a white or light colored corset, instead of my black one. >_> But I've got a pattern I already like, so I'd just need to make another one.

ETA: works so much better when I get the html right >_>;;