A Regency Spencer, HSM March: Protection

HSM 3 Protection

I finished a spencer to go with my Regency day dress this spring.  The blue cotton pique was picked up at the scrap swap at Figments & Filaments last year.  I used the pattern from the dress for the bodice back and sleeves, and just extrapolated the rest.  The dress has a drop front bib, so I was able to work with the under bits which overlap underneath the bib.

Decorated with a total of twelve completely non-functional buttons, as well as a few
bits of folded fabric tubes sewn down over the back seams to add a bit of interest.

Ruffled collar holds its shape with two rows of piping along the edge.
Or perhaps a couched cord would be a better way to describe it, as it's not encased within a seam.

Detail of the non-functional false cuffs (and fabric texture).

I turned the sleeve inside out so I could show off how that nonsense was put together.  The seams at the armsyce and bottom of the sleeve puff are bound with cotton tape.  The puff is supported with a crescent of silk organza and the band is held up with two tapes, further assisting the poofing.

Sleeve head, inside out.

I can't decide if it's too much ruffle to wear the chemisette AND the spencer.
I suppose I could always sub out for a fichu if I want to tone it down a bit.

The flash really brings out the shiny in the dress fabric.  I haven't the foggiest what the secondary
content of the dress is, and have absolutely no fabric left to play with.  I guess the world will never know.

And for the Historical Sew Monthly Challenge:

What the item is: Regency Spencer
The Challenge: Protection
Fabric/Materials: blue cotton pique, linen, silk organza.
Pattern: heavily modified from the Laughing Moon Mercantile bib front dress pattern.
Year: 1810-ish
Notions: fabric covered buttons, hooks with hand stitched loop closures, cotton twill tape.
How historically accurate is it? 8/10
Hours to complete: maybe 20
First worn: in a 'done enough' state for a costumers' guild outing to see Pride + Prejudice + Zombies, but in the finished state, right there in the dining room.
Total cost: The fabric came from the scrap swap at a local costuming convention and the lining is from my own leftovers, so the only really cost was the button forms. All told, maybe $6.

1950s Avengers Dress

I came home from Costume Con and indulged in a quickie sewing project. Well, quick was a bit of a relative term, but when compared to months-long historical recreations, a few days is nothing. Now, I'm just a teensy bit of an Avengers fan. I had been keeping an eye on some of the themed cotton prints at JoAnn's for a while now, but it wasn't until I spotted this gem that inspiration struck. they finally came up with a print that included Black Widow and Hawkeye along side the other more commonly represented crew. Cue the flailing.

Marvel Avengers Assemble Grid Cotton Fabric

In order to take advantage of the large characters on this, I needed a dress that had a lot of acreage that wasn't frequently interrupted by seams. This McCall's 50s retro wrap dress seemed to fit the need:

Only three pattern pieces, darted in front and back, with back waist and shoulder seams.
Back wraps around to the front for a sheath-and-overskirt look. A: has contrast back and skirt.
Bias tape finishes edges.  Large pieces of fabric with darts for fitting that would be largely
covered in the front by the wrap-around "belt" portion.

A bit of googling shows that it was once Butterick's most popular pattern, but among the modern sewers, the dress is getting a lot of hate. I read everything that I could, especially the details on just what people were hating about it. Poor fit throughout the bodice, insecure fastenings, gaping under the arm, heavy skirts draging the dress off kilter with wear, and so on and so forth. Wow. For once being so popular, people sure did hate this dress. But then I lucked upon a tutorial for re-fitting the dress. It turns out that the pattern was re-drafted when being made up for a modern release, loosing a lot of the fit that made the dress so awesome. Katrina over at Edelweiss Patterns Blog wrote up a comprehensive set of instructions that made huge improvements in the way the dress fits.

This was another one of those patterns that, once drawn out, I kinda of started to ignore the cutting construction details. For starters, I had to get creative with the piecing since I was working with a narrow (45") width fabric. Blue lines show where I extended pieces out for better coverage/security/up-sizing.  Red lines are where I either added additional darts or broke pattern pieces down to be able to cut them from a narrow fabric.  Since the bulk of the front panel gets hidden under the skirts, I wasn't worried about the extra seams.

A nice thing about this print is that no matter which orientation you have the fabric in, somebody is upright.  The dominant image to my eye was the Hulk and I wanted to keep him upright on the bodice and skirt fronts.  This left Black Widow and Hawkeye the upright characters on the skirt back.  Of course, Hawkeye falling to the earth while shooting an arrow straight up might actually be upright, so it's hard to tell.

I flat-lined the front and bodice back with the  Sew Classics Bottomweight Wrinklease in white.  This gave a nice foundation for the bodice pieces, while also ensuring opacity.  I added a few inches to the center front pieces so the finished dress doesn't have quite the open space in the front, which I think that I like.  I wasn't a fan of where the skirt fronts flip back, so the three inches or so of the center front is faced, which serves two purposes. One, the reverse of the fabric is quite obvious and a bit unsightly. Two, I used the same cotton bottom weight as the flat-lining, which added a bit of weight to keep the skirt fronts from flying open.  I also swapped out the button-and-loop closure recommended in the pattern for a set of shoestring ties that wrap back around to the front.  Being able to tighten the under layer means that stress is not put on the closer of the outer layer, so that it lays nicely and doesn't bunch.

Another issue with the dress is that you can't really wear the standard petticoat under this, since the dress is open in the front, and the front bodice piece does not flare out from the waist. And this dress NEEDS a petticoat.  You can't achieve that classic 50's silhouette without one.  Katrina's sew-a-long tutorial had instructions for making a petticoat that separates in the front so that it could be tucked under the overskirt, but I worried that it'd work it's way forward and show. So instead, I chose to build the petticoat into the dress. I cut a second overskirt piece out of my white cotton bottomweight that was a couple inches shorter in length, and did not have the added inches to the center front. The hem was finished with some vintage bias tape and sewn down with several rows of straight stitching in a trapunto style to add a bit of stiffness.  I sandwiched the bottom edge of the upper back piece in between the two layers of skirt, then surged the seam allowance which would then be hidden when the skirt layers hang down. The built-in petticoat is nice because I don't have to worry about tracking down extra pieces, but the cotton did add a bit of weight.  I don't notice it when I'm wearing the dress, but my hanger wasn't happy and I'll have to keep that in mind when packing for travel.

The dress opened up to show the facings on the overskirt, as well as the added petticoat layer.

The front has 3 hook-n-eye closures, but I stitched down a couple of Avengers logo pins in place of buttons.

The back of the skirts ride up just a bit.  I think that the next time I make up this pattern, I need to add more length to the skirt back, taking a bit of it out of the bodice back.  I like the built-in petticoat, but I think I'll look for a light-weight tulle and keep the dress hand-wash only.  And even though I added more coverage to the armhole, it still falls a bit short in the front.  Easy enough to fix with a neutral colored tank top for now, but I'll have to tweak that for next time.  Because OF COURSE there's going to be a next time.  The dress is comfy and fun to wear, while still dressing it up quite a bit compared to my usual slovenly fashions of knit tees and cargo pants.  I'm actually already plotting another. This time, a fancy party frock. I've got three yards of this synthetic plum taffeta with black flocked floral designs on it that's been languishing in the stash for eons. It's not enough to make a full dress out of, but if I pair that up with a plain black taffeta and do something along the lines of View A, only cutting the upper back piece out of solid black and leave it so that only the over skirt is the decorative bit, it ought to look pretty sharp.  Holiday party dress?

HSF 14: Paisley & Plaid - 1920s Flat Cap

Since I knew that I'd be well and truly occupied with Costume College this weekend, I got a quick and easy item out of the way for the next HSF challenge a few weeks in advance.  Behold, the early 20th century man's flat cap (part the second).

The hat matches the plaid lined Norfolk jacket that I finished for my honey back in January.  The hat I'd originally made was a touch too small and I had inserted the lining inside out (but I'd run out of time to remake it until now).

The original attempt at a flat cap for the 1920s Joker was made out of the plaid gauze flat lined to linen, then lined with polyester lining fabric.  For this one, I went with a more coordinated match to the suit.  

What the item is: man's flat cap
The Challenge: Paisley & Plaid
Fabric: wool/poly suiting, plaid cotton gauze lining, a few scraps of interfacing for the brim.
Pattern: loosely based on whatever tutorials I could find on a cursory google search.
Year: 1920s
Notions: just the thread to hold it all together
How historically accurate is it? I'd give it a 6/10.  The look is there, but it was not based on any particular extant piece.
Hours to complete: 3
First worn: at the KCCG's Friday Night Jazz Dinner
Total cost: I'm calling it zero, since it's assembled with scraps left over from the Joker's Norfolk jacket project. Even then, it's only a few dollars worth or materials.

HSF 11: The Politics of Fashion - Chemise de la Reine and Bergère Hat

I ended up doing a bit of a whirlwind entry for the latest challenge at the Historical Sew Fortnightly. The theme was The Politics of Fashion, where we were challenged to create something that demonstrates the interactions between dress and political history.  As I'd been focusing on the 18th century lately, I decided to try to find something from around about that time.  Following shortly after the time that my court gown is from would be the time leading up to the French Revolution.  Those decades were rife with political and social change, a great example of which was the fad amongst wealthy women to dress in a style reminiscent of the working class women of agricultural areas.  The chemise a la reine was often paired with straw bergère or shepherdess hat.  The look was supposed to bring to mind the simple, carefree life enjoyed by no actual shepherdess, ever.  It was also an example of a simplification in the style of dress of the upper classes in response to significant social pressures from the masses.  Sarah Lorraine of Mode Historique is doing her master's degree research on the chemise a la reine and has some great information up that I found super helpful.

What I loved about the dress was how simple it was (relatively speaking), as well as how comfortable.  The bodice and sleeves are gathered, not fitted.  And if I wanted to skip my stays, the pair of quilted jumps I'm working on would do just as well.  Bonus points that I had plenty of that window pane cotton lawn that I did the smocked bib Regency apron out of and this made a nice little side track from the court gown project.  I found a scan from The Cut of Women's Clothes 1600-1930 by Norah Waugh that sketched out the basic shape of the gown and I used that as my starting point.  (as well as ordering a copy of the book for myself, as it was looking pretty useful).  I decided to go with an open front gown so that I had the option to wear it over a colored petticoat, should the inclination arise.  Yay for options.  I skipped adding any sort of front closure beyond the drawstring at the neckline.  Once the sash is in place, everything holds itself together quite nicely.  To hide the bow from the drawstring, I plan to wear this brooch with an image of Gainsborough's Blue Boy on it.

The sleeves were gathered once above the elbow, but I put no gathering in at the waist as I found it fairly easy to arrange the fullness to my liking and then hold it in place with the sash.  Thanks to Katherine for pointing out that, unlike how it was illustrated in Waugh's book, the channel for gathering the waist would not actually be along the straight of grain but curved to fit around the hips.  Without that heads up, I'd have likely gone ahead and put it in following the weave of the fabric and then had to invent new swear words when having to pick the white stitches out of the white lawn.  I may revisit the notion of the drawstring waist  later, after I've had a chance to wear it around a bit.

All told, the dress probably took about 20 hours to make, but a lot of that time was spent hand sewing a rolled hem for the ruffles on the cuffs and neckline.  The sash and contrasting bands on the sleeves were made from silk taffeta.  The sleeve bands were just strips of fabric with the long ends folded under that were tack stitched directly on top of the gathered channels.  The sash was three 10 inch wide widths of 54" fabric that were sewn into one long strip and then into a tube that was turned inside out.  The ends were tucked under to form a point and I've ordered some spring green silk cord to make a pair of tassels out of that I'll hang off the ends.  

I hope I don't regret putting a train on a white dress.

The hat was a garden hat I picked up at the Goodwill and modified.  There are a million tutorials out there for making a make-do 18th century straw hat if you need one, but it's terribly simple in concept.  You just cut a section of the crown height out to drop it down to the desired height, then sew/glue/fuse with mastiff spit the crown back onto the bring and cover your likely terribly ugly hack job with a hand band and decorations.  I tried meticulously hand sewing the crown back onto the brim, but the woven straw wasn't keen on the notion of holding together, so I went back and slathered on a frankly obscene amount of tacky glue to finish the job.  I fashioned a bow out of the last of the light green taffeta and paired it with a bit of this blue-green silk shambala that I impulse bought from Silk Baron because it looked interesting.  The fabric is a blend of three different silks and it takes up dye in an interesting varigated pattern.  As is, I feel like the hat is missing something, but I can't tell what.  Maybe some fake wildflowers?  Some lace?  I don't want to do ties as I'll be using a hat pin to affix the hat to an as yet unmade tragic abuse of a curly wig.

It's not often that I pick a project simple enough for me to do up an entire outfit in just over a week.  I'm aiming to wear this number to the Fantasy Tea at Costume College.  

Some other useful blog posts:

http://diariosanacronicos.com/blog/tutorial-chemise-a-la-reine-chemise-gown/

http://www.thefashionhistorian.com/2012/03/chemise-la-reine.html

http://persephonemagazine.com/2013/05/the-chemise-a-la-reine-an-eighteenth-century-fashion-trend/

http://www.koshka-the-cat.com/chemise_dress.html

HSF 9: Black & White - white Natural form petticoat

What it is: petticoat
Fabric: white cotton with lace and pin tuck lattice pattern, plus some plain white cotton for the back.
Pattern: Truly Victorian 170: Victorian Petticoats, View 2: 1877-1882
Year: Natural Form era, around about 1880
Notions: polyester thread and 1/2" cotton twill tape ties.
How historically accurate is it?  Close enough.
Hours to complete: 4-5
Total cost: No idea as it was completely from the stash.

When I got done with the black accessories to complete the 1920s outfit, I thought that perhaps I could squeeze in a white project to round the challenge out.  Costume College is coming up this summer and they're doing an under dressed breakfast full of wrappers and banyans that I'd kind of like to have a tea gown for.  I've had the TV432 1882 Tea Gown pattern for a couple of years now and it's about time I get around to making one up.  I've also had this funky lacey pin tuck cotton taking up space for several years.  I've always thought that I'd make up a bustle era underskirt with it to show it off, but no project ever really materialized to use it.

Fast forward to last month when All The Pretty Dresses showcased a petticoat with extra eyelet decoration down the lower half of the center front that was most likely intended to be seen under an open wrapper and I had my Aha! moment.  (side note, if you're not already following this blog, the author is cataloging extrant garments that come up on auction sites so that the informtion that they provide can be available long after the auction has ended.  SUCH a resource.)

Cotton eyelet petticoat, American Civil War Era on All The Pretty Dresses

I had just enough of the material to do the front panel and a ruffle at the hemline.  The last back panel has a plain cotton upper piece with a couple rows of piping, then the botton half was the last odd rectangular shape of the laced/tucked fabric, since the tuckes helped give it body and the lower back half is where I want the fluff to be.  There is an eight inch slit in the center back waist that closes with a drawstring.  The drawstring doesn't go through the entire waistband, instead being cut in two pieces and anchoring at the side seams.  This way, the front panel will stay flat and any gathering will happen in the back.  It ended up quite sheer in the front, which I didn't notice until I broke out the flash photography.  I might have wanted to flatline that front panel, in retrospect.  Instead, I think I'll just make up another plain white petticoat to go under it.

Now I just need to pick a fabric from the stash to use for the tea gown and I'll be ready to roll.  I'm a little hesitant, beause the blue and cream floral linen blend that I was eyeing for the project doesn't seem like it would pair well with a pure white petticoat.  Any thoughts on the matter?  Should I tea stain or lightly dye the petticoat to get an off-white/ivory color, pick a white-friendly fabric for the tea gown, or just say screw it and wear white and ivory together like the rebel that I am?

HSF'14 #3: Pink! 1770s Court Panniers

I've spent the last week or so working on the panniers for my 18th Century Court Gown project.  The current HSF challenge was pink, which I'll admit, I wasn't too thrilled about.  I'm not really a fan of the color.  However, I've been trying to make a point of making foundation garments and underpinnings in colors other than white.  Not for any aesthetic purpose, mind you, but for practical reasons.  I store most of my costumes hanging up in zippered wardrobes, which makes it difficult to tell one white cotton blob apart from any other.  Ergo, color.  So I thought, what the hell.  This is already a ridiculous project.  Let's make it just that little bit sillier and make the panniers pink.

I picked up a few yards of white cotton sheeting from Dharma Trading Co and dyed it up in the washing machine.  I thought I'd chosen a nice, subdued shade of pink.

I was wrong.  That cotton sucked up the dye like it was dying of thirst, and what I ended up with was a violently Pepto-Bismol shade of pink.  Well, whatever.  It's underwear.  Life goes on.

I used Simplicity 3635 as a base for making the panniers.  

I had picked up the pattern second hand, though.  And while all of the pattern pieces were present, the instructions were not.  However, with only three pieces and a general idea of what the thing was supposed to look like in the end, I was confident I could figure it out.  One of the first things that I needed to change, though, was the width.  I took an image of the dress I was recreating and superimposed my measurements onto it.  As I am both tall and big, the dress was going to have to be stupid wide.  Like, 78 inches wide at the hem.  *pause for a fit of giggles over just how ridiculous my hobby can be*  Ahem.  As you can see, I wasn't taking the maths too seriously.  The diagram was done up in MS Paint and all measurements were approximate.  

Measuring out the pattern pieces, they would give me about 54" width at the hem (of the panniers, which would still be 6-8" above the floor).  Assuming that the petticoat and then the skirt of the dress would each add about 2" to the width, I needed the panniers to give me a total of 70".  Below is the rough sketch I did up to show where I wanted to add the width.  I had originally planned to cut additional center front and back pieces to get the extra width, but it turned out that my fabric was wide enough for me to just add 8 inches to the CF/CB and cut the front and back pieces on the fold.  

This is what I came up with:

I seriously spent like five minutes just sitting there laughing at the monstrocity, texting pictures to my costumer friends.  While there were certainly a few gowns with this kind of shape (such as the one below) that had that gentle sloping sides, it wasn't what I was looking for.

Mantua 1755-60, the Victoria and Albert Museum

So, where did I go wrong?  I think the problem here was that, although I widened the front and back of the panniers, I was still gathering the topmost portions into a waistband.  This resulted in the bottom being wider than the top.  I went back and took a triangle-shaped piece out of the center front and back that was 8" wide at the base, tapering into a dart about three inches below the waist band.  This lessened the circumference of the bottom hoop by 16", while affecting the upper hoops less.

MUCH better.

The gathers at the top of the petticoat should also give a bit more of a boost over the top edges, so I think this rendition will do just fine.  I set the dress form up on the dining table so that I could adjust the ties without having to lay on the floor.  The other big change I made from the pattern was to shift all of the ties over 3" closer to the center.  In the photo of the first draft, you can see how the hoops keep sagging  By shifting the ties, the tension gets distributed a bit more evenly.  The ties are attached with safety pins for the time being, as I'm still playing with their placement.  I'm having trouble getting the spaces between the hoops to stop collapsing like an accordion.  If changing the tie placement doesn't fix it, I may go back and put a few pieces of boning in to force them to stay apart.

Ties connecting front and back of the pannier give it an oval shape.

But not quite oval enough.  Gotta tighten those ties a bit more!

The thing is entirely machine sewn.  I opted to use bone casing instead of making channels or loops from the cotton.  It saved a lot of time (but cost a lot more).  My hope was that the casing would help soften the lines of the hoops a bit, so that I can get away with just the one petticoat between them and the skirt of the dress.  I left the spaces at the side for accessing pockets extra wide and bound the raw edges white cotton bias tape.  

I'm also considering ordering some of the hoop connectors from Farthingales, so currently, the hoops just overlap each other inside the channels by about 10".  I wanted to make sure that the entire contraption was easy to pack for air travel, so any of the more permanent methods of connecting the cut ends just wasn't going to work.

Info for the Historical Sew Fortnightly:

Pepto-Pink Panniers!
The Challenge: #3 Pink
Fabric: White cotton sheeting, dyed "coral" pink.
Pattern: Simplicity
Year: 1770s
Notions:  3/4" bone casing, 1/2" cotton twill ties, 3/8" poly satin ribbon, white cotton bias tape and stupid amounts of hoop steel.
How historically accurate is it? Hmm... 7/10.
Hours to complete: about 14, including sketching out the pattern and dyeing the fabric.
Total cost: totally guessing, but probably around $80 US.  Hoop steel and bone casing is pricey stuff.

HSF 25: One Meter Challenge, A Regency Bib Apron

Right about the time this challenge was announced, I happened upon this fantatic window pane cotton in the clearance pile at my local Jo Ann's.  

It was so light and gauzy, with that fantastic woven design to it, I just knew I'd be able to find something to do with it.  Aprons seem to have been everywhere lately and so I chose to challenge myself to make one out of one meter of fabric, and NOTHING else.  There were so many times where I was tempted to do something else  add a bit of embroidery, bind with ribbon or use twill tape for ties.  Having this hard limit actually helped me narrow down what I was doing.  A handy thing in a hobby with infinite possibilities. I did the math and cut myself off 39.3 inches of the 54 inch wide fabric first thing and put the rest of the bolt away

(yeah, I'll admit it.  I bought the whole bolt).

Thanks to Bethany of Diary of a Seamstress for the lead on this painting by Georg Friedrich Kersting, ca. 1814.  Note the full length front and shoulder straps to hold it in place.

Shoulder straps crossing in the back mean that I neither have to fuss with a bulky tie at the base of my neck 

(that inevitably tangles in hair or snags on my necklace), nor need I struggle to pull a strap over my head, upsetting my hair/makeup/turbin.  The straps are looped around the waist ties, but not anchored to them. This way, I can make the space super large for taking on/off without having to adjust the straps.

The directional design to the fabric made me want to avoid using it on the bias, so instead I played around with little gathering stitches at different intervals until I found a pattern that I liked.  According to comments on the HSF Facebook page, this technique is known as counterchange smocking.

The pattern was created by using a stitch to gather two corners of successive squares together on what I had deemed the "back" side of the fabric.  Then I'd skip a corner, then gather the next two.  when one row was done, I'd move down two rows and repeat the process, off-setting the gathering stitches by one width.  This resulted in the bubbled up wavy pattern that you see on the "right" side of the fabric.  The whole bib was then backed with another piece of fabric to hide the stitches.  

Here, have a visual demonstrating that process:

The waistband is two rectangles with all four edges turned under, between which I sandwiched the bottom of the bib, the top of the apron skirt, and the two waist ties.  Since the fabric is so thin, this didn't end up bulky at all.

 

My leftover fabric, minus the bits I cut off when fitting the straps and ties in finishing.  Pretty thorough use of that meter.

Just the Facts:
Fabric: 1 meter (39.3 inches) of 57 inch wide woven cotton gauze
Pattern: Modeled after one done up by Across the Ages, with minor alterations.
Year: 1820s
Notions: white silk thread, because I realized at a late hour that I was out of white cotton and I wanted to use something natural so that, should I ever stain this, I could dye it another color to hide it.
How historically accurate is it? Entirely hand sewn of 100% cotton, I'm giving this A.
Hours to complete: 10-12. It's hard to say as the project folded up nicely into a quart size baggie to be carried around for something to keep my hands busy when away from home.
First worn: not yet, but part of my sewing goals for 2014 is to have more "everyday" historical wear instead of all ballgowns and fancy dress, so that's going to fit right in with it.
Total cost: Fabric was on clearance for $8/yd, so even with taxes and thread, we're looking at less than $10 US total.