Miss Philomena

The PA Renn Faire yesterday was a lot of fun. I was feeling rather yucky in the morning, a growing migraine and some nausea to go with it, but I ignored that and went anyway, and I'm glad I did. By the time I got to the faire after the two hour drive I was feeling fine anyway. I'd never been to the faire before and it was huge. Lots of walking up and down hills, which actually reminded me of bing in Germany last summer, and all the walking tours I did there. And speaking of Germany, I was the token German of the group, and I even had the award to prove it. I got several comments on it from random people, cast members and faire visitors alike. I need to steal pictures from other people, still.

Now, as for my next project, I'm intending to make a new pair of stays for next Thursday. Pennsbury Manor has Harvest Days, which means too many school groups coming through, and I'll be demonstrating Dorset buttons for them. Can I make stays in nine days? I'm feeling hopeful, but I still need to figure out some type of boning too. Tonight's plan is to draft up the 1680s stays from Corsets and Crinolines.

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!

Two awesome things happened today.

1) I got into the Burnley & Trowbridge stays class in September! \o/ I was first on the waitlist, and someone cancelled, so I'm in~

2) The (second) sari I ordered for my Titanic dinner gown arrived today. I've already got it cut apart and mostly draped, but I need to finish the underdress before I actually finish up the draping of it. It's a net sari, and I wasn't sure if I'd match the color for the underdress or go with black, but black won out, so it'll be made of the black silk charmeuse I've had in the stash for a few years now. I'm still trying to decide if I want to line the skirt or not, but I think, since I'm not doing a train on the silk, I'm going to skip lining. I think I'll just do a petticoat for it.

In the slightly less awesome realm of things, I'm almost finished with the green striped gown. I just need to sew the last few hooks and eyes into the bodice.

taking a short break from the green gown, I put some thought to what I want for the Gibson girl pool party, and I think I'm going to go with more of an early teens day gown, something like this dress though with a red and white color scheme instead. (and trim rather than embroidery, with time constraints) And I picked up a red hat earlier that with some basic alterations should work quite well~

but I did take pictures of what I picked up in NYC today~

The main focus of the day was getting fabric for Mom's dress for the Titanic dinner. She's going with this Liberty of London gown from the Met. She decided to go with a nice light sage green for the color, and we found some lovely silk charmeuse for it.

As for me, I picked up a wild purple and blue dupioni. I'm thinking of a combination of this and this for it. I don't know when I'm going to do it, but probably not for Dress U.

On the other hand, I did pick up fabric for something I am going to do for Dress U. I got this striped blue and copper silk a few months ago, but there was only three and a half yards, so it got binned while I contemplated what to do with it. I finally decided what to do for the Mad Hatter tea party, so I grabbed the solid copper silk today for my idea. The color match really is a lot better than it looks in this picture. So anyway, what I want to do is basically this gown with some slight differences, make it a bit steampunkish. I'm only going to do one tier on the skirt, so it'll be knee length instead, and the bodice/collar might be a bit different as well. I'll figure that out when I actually start working on it. And this also means I'll need to make myself a short bustle, as I only have my long lobstertail bustle and the 1872 hooped bustle from Corsets and Crinolines.

And lastly, we hit a couple of the stores in the wholesale district to pick up some jewelry. I grabbed a couple nice choker sets, as well as some hair pins, and lastly an adorable pair of fascinators. The one looks kind of blue in this picture, but it's actually bright purple.

And that was today \o/

Is it wrong to plan an outfit around a certain type of hat? More specifically, this type of hat?



It's big and over the top and at the same time simple. I love it. I might even attempt to do it in straw if I have enough narrow braid to do it.

I'll probably go for either a zone front like Hilary Swank is wearing with it, or perhaps some type of round gown. I'm still deciding. It depends on what the stash says to me.

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~

The Met's website is such an amazing, evil thing, isn't it? xD There are so many things on my someday list from their collection, and I just want to toss up a list so I can remember for myself.

1. Robe à la Polonaise ca. 1787 I love love love the golden yellow damask trimmed with blue taffeta combination. And the shawl collar and ruched oversleeve. I just love the whole thing, though I think when I do make this style I'll make it a bit more fitted than this.

2. Visiting Dress, 1867 It's striped. It's transitional early bustle. It's floofy and over the top. Do I really need to say anything else? :3

3. Dress, 1865-1870 I really like the shape and draping of this skirt. (The Met gave this a range of 1865-70, but I'd definitely put it closer to the end of that than the beginning, given the style of the skirt.)

4. Afternoon Dress, 1870-1875 This is definitely a dress where the fabric makes the gown. But I just love that bright blue in the brocade that's then repeated in the trim.

5. Dress, 1872 I love how light and airy and soft this looks. I really want to make a summer ensemble, with either a printed gauze like this, or just a plain organza.

6. Afternoon Ensemble, 1880-1885 This blue is such a beautiful, rich color, and the brocade, of course, is the perfect highlight with it. And I love all the mix and match pieces and the various ways it can be worn.

7. Dress, 1885-1888 I know koshka_the_cat is planning on making this, but I've been drooling over this down for a couple months now. The stripes! Who could say no to that?

8. Afternoon Dress, 1912 I want to do the DPP for Your Wardrobe Unlock'd, and while my first thought went to an evening gown, this one with it's deceptively simple lines (and stripes!) is lovely. I think the only thing I'd really change is the neckline. I really, really can't stand high collars, or really anything tight around the neck.

So, I've actually cut down the list from what I'd originally planned, believe it or not. But this seems like a good starting off point. xD

Oh and one last thing! I've made myself a twitter account, if anyone has one and would be interested in following it, though I don't know how often I'll use it.

The auction for the damask I was bidding on was pulled. D: But there were six days left and bidding was almost up to my limit anyway, so even if it had run the full time, I probably would've lost it anyway. Sooooo I went looking for something else and snatched this damask as a BIN. It's pink and gold, obviously, but as the V&A mantua was a blue and silver damask in what looks like a large, repeating pattern, I figure it will do just fine. There's 8 yards of the pink and gold, which is what I was figuring on needing.

It didn't process when I first started looking at the Met's mantua, but it has a center back measurement of 104 inches. Now, going by my own measurements at 5'6, from the back of my neck to the floor is about 54 inches. That means the train of the mantua is 50 inches, or over 4 feet long. Now that's a lot of brocade dragging on the floor. But for the sake of pictures being faithful to the original, I'm going to make mine that long as well. Because of the way the Met has it draped, I think I can sneak some type of lining/backing for the train. I'm toying with the idea of flatlining it with silk organza, because it won't add much bulk. Do you have any thoughts on that, flist?

I also (finally) stopped dragging my feet about the stays I'll need for under this. My original thought was that I'd either have to use steel boning or order reed. But then I realized there might be something left over from when my dad used to re-cane chairs. His stuff was all either round or square, so I grabbed the smallest he had, which is about 1/8" diameter. (It's been hanging in the garage for who knows how many years collecting dust and dirt, so I'm soaking it in the tub overnight to get it a bit cleaner.) I'm hoping two reeds per channel will be strong enough. I might also do every fourth or fifth channel with steel anyway, to add a little extra support.

And now, to bring back an old theme~ The Mom chronicles! I convinced her to make a journal (gwenevereofisis) a couple weeks ago, and she's been lurking around in the comms I added her to, but apart from me she has no friends yet. D: But that's not why I'm bringing her up now. We're going to an SCA event on Saturday, and I've been helping her make a basic 6 gore kirtle. I draped a muslin on her, and then drafted the pattern off of that. We were a bit short on the teal-green wool for it, only about 4.5 yards, so I laid it out and did all the cutting and pinning, but she's done all the piecing on her own. Tomorrow we need to put in the sleeves and sew the lining in, and then it'll be picture time! And then mom will be on her own for doing all the hand sewing, i.e. the eyelets for the front lacing, the buttonholes for the sleeves, and the hem. I've got my own hand sewing to do to finish up my outfit for Saturday, after all.

I've got the Watteau polonaise all pieced, apart from the stomacher and sleeves, and pinned up on my dress form. (No pictures because I haven't gotten around to digging my camera out and charging it. >_>) I'm not entirely crazy with how the back of it lays over my bustle, but I think part of it is because it's only over a petticoat right now, which a) is nowhere near as full as the matching skirt will be, and b) only has a couple inches of train in the back, so it's not flaring out there to support the polonaise. I'm also toying with the idea of making Laughing Moon's train supporting bustle, which will flare out the back of the skirt and polonaise nicely. But I think that, which is not specifically needed at this point in time, will have to wait.

I've also started planning my next project as well. I've wanted to make an 18th century mantua for a while now, when the style became a bit more defined and regulated. My first plan was to style it after the 1710s mantua in the V&A, but now I'm thinking I want to go a touch earlier, before it became standard to loop the train up. And I can't deny that I've always been drawn to the Met's 1708 mantua. I've been looking at all the pictures of it for a while today, trying to figure out how exactly they arranged the poofs in the back, and I think, rather than folding the skirt back over itself and securing it at the center back waist, they either tucked the sides under, or just much lower, and then puffed a bit of the back up over it to make that big puff. You can kind of see that it was done slightly differently in the two different sets of pictures, as the train is longer in one set.

As for fabric for the mantua, I have my eye on a couple damasks on ebay, and if those fall through, I'll just look for something in New York next time I'm up there. I'd really prefer a damask or brocade, but worse comes to worse I'll use something solid. (I'm holding out for a specific damask, though, if it doesn't go too high. >_>)