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?

Project Summary: Bilbo's Dressing Gown from The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

I have a Honey, and my Honey has a particular affinity with Hobbits. So, when the first of the Hobbit movies came out, of COURSE he needed to have himself a new costume. We collectively latched onto the idea of the dressing gown. Him because it was quircky and awesome, me becaue I could turn my head to the side and go "How the f*** did they make that?" One of the things that I love about this hobby is figuring things out bit. I've not seen a lot of people attempt this particular project, so I really wanted to put what I learned out into the world. Hopefully, it'll help someone else.

In one of the early sequences of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, we Bilbo settling down in his tidy dining room to eat his dinner in peace. As Tolkien fans know, Bilbo’s dinner (and his life) are interrupted by a company of dwarves. During this key sequence of the movie, Bilbo is seen wearing a quaint and cozy patchwork dressing gown.

The dressing gown appears to have been made out of a patchwork of velvets in a variety of solids colors and prints. The patchwork appears to have a random pattern. It has a solid burgundy velvet collar, cuffs and belt with piping on terminal edges that is light (but not white or ivory) in color and appears to have a very small pattern on it. Looking at the screen caps from the back, it appears that the back of the dressing gown could possibly be from three pieces with princess-style seams, which would give the garment a bit more of a fitted look. However, I could just as easily reason in my head that those were folds in the fabric. Seeing as how working with the quilting was going to be a challenge enough in it's own right, I went with the easier interpretation and went ahead and made the back a flat piece with a straight line seam down the center. Any fitting was then done at the side seams.

The pattern I used as a launching point was Butterick 3648 Making History: Dickens St. Nicholas/Ghost of Christmas Past. I chose this for simplicity's sake: I already had it on hand and it was 'close enough". I figured a bathrobe couldn't be that hard to cobble together. So I adjusted the sleeves to be a bit more tube-like and the robes shorter and less full.

I made a muslin mock up out of an unremarkable cotton print from my stash. It was important to keep in mind that heavy fabrics will stand out more and this was taken into account in the fitting. Hem allowances for collar, cuff and bottom hem were taken into account. Grain lines were marked onto the mock up pieces, which was critically important for matching the patchwork layer.

The muslin mock up was disassembled and laid out as a guide for assembling the patchwork layer so that I wouldn't have to quilt any more of the velvet than absolutely necessary. It appears that the dressing gown is made of quilted velvet, sewn together in squares and rectangles to form a completely randomized pattern. The next step was to sort out what, if any, sort of pattern was used in the organization of the quilting. A couple of black and white prints of the costume helped me focus. I used the base of Bilbo's ear as a size reference and then outlined all of the places where I could identify the shape, then extrapolated from there.

This is what I could come up with as far as a recognizable pattern.  A few of the 8-square blocks had a repeated pattern and I could identify four distinct arrangements.  For each block, I penciled in what color/pattern arrangements were present.

While it was impossible to find the exact fabric patterns that were used in the movie, we compiled a set of fabrics to give the same impression of texture and color in the original. Some fabrics were used in the form in which they were purchased; other pieces of fabric were dyed into one or more colors to create more variety in the final piece.

When choosing fabrics, I wanted to stick to natural fibers. This gave the benefit of breathability, and also the opportunity to adjust the colors of some basic light colored solids to increase variety. Choices were further weeded down by systematically ignoring all stretch or panne velvets that were available. I was left with the choice between cotton and silk, and went with cotton because of the appropriate prints I could find and relative affordability. While a few of the patches in the final garment are presented in the exact color in which they came, many more were dyed to that color by Michelle and I. I purchased large quantities of solid colored velvet in light blue and ivory, then cut them into 1/8 yard pieces and dyed them in small batches using Dharma Fiber Reactive dyes to yield a stunning array of blues, greens, golds, reds and browns.

All of the velvets and lining material for this costume were purchased online from Denver Discount fabrics. They did not have the appropriate color of burgundy for the trims, so that was also dyed by hand using the Buttercream velvet and Dharma Fiber Reactive dye in Burgundy. The 100% cotton chambray lining was originally purchased in peach, but the fabric was a poor match for the velvets and was also thrown into the burgundy dye bath. The cotton print for the piping was pulled from my stash and was originally a pale lavender. To help it blend in with the earthier tones of the velvet patchwork, the print was dyed with a mix of maroon and brown Rit dye, giving it a much more muted color.

My honey was conscripted to help with the cutting and labeling of squares, in addition to doing much of the ironing which had to happen to every seam. Trying to keep the nap going in the same direction for all pieces was a pain in the rump. What we ended up doing was to use chalk arrows drawn on the back of each piece.

SO many little squares and rectangles.

A plain cotton muslin was dyed a dusty rose and used as lining.  Once each of the body and sleeve pieces were fully quilted, I used the lining pieces to cut out the pattern piece from the quilting.  The lapel is made from two 3" wide strips of velvet that were tappered to 2" at their terminal ends, then attached to a cotton backing with piping along the seam.  The cuffs have velvet on the inside and out, with piping along the terminal seam.  The belt is simply two long strips of velvet sewn right sides together, then turned right side out.  The hem was turned up and sewn by hand to avoid obvious stitch lines on the velvet.

Photo by official CC30 photographer, Richard Man.

Photo by official CC30 photographer, Richard Man.

Photo by official CC30 photographer, Richard Man.

The hairy feet, Honey did all by himself.  I had nothing to do with that, beyond the generous tip left for the housekeeping staff for cleaning up the dusting of curly dark hairs off of our bathroom floor.  We entered the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Masquerade at Costume Con 31 (May, 2013) where it received a Workmanship Award for Best Journeyman. Such a well dressed hobbit.

As a fun side project, I made up a small quilt to use up the leftover materials.  The quilt is made exactly like the robe, with lining and piping scraps pieced together for the backing, and rows of piping along both edges of the burgundy velvet border.  It's too small to be a lap blanket, but it should look lovely hanging on the guest room wall.

Project Summary: 1920s Poison Ivy

The first costume I want to talk about from our group of Batman villains is Poison Ivy.  This was by far my favorite character of all that I worked on.  I love this color and I love this character.  Poison Ivy is a villain who wields her sexuality as a weapon.  It was a super easy choice to assign that character to my bff, V, as it is my personal goal in this life to find her costumes that show off her super long legs.

The theme for our group was 1920s reinterpretations of the characters as they were presented in the Batman movies that came out while I was growing up.  Poison Ivy was featured in Batman and Robin (1997) and was played by Uma Thurman.  

Even though her cape here appears to be a burnout velvet, I really loved the light, fluttery hem of it.
It was this hemline that helped me chose how I wanted to realize this costume.

I loved how this character was done up in such a way as to take advantage of the long, lean lines.  She wasn't super busty or showing a lot of skin.  To capture her look, I went with a long, dropped waist dress with a handkerchief hem, which reminded me of the hemline on her cloak.  I started with the following pattern:

Folkwear #264: the Monte Carlo Dress

 For period inspiration, I found this little vintage number for sale on Etsy.

I used a silk chiffon, and flat lined the bodice with silk habotai, both of which were dyed emerald green.  The only adjustment to the pattern was to change the way the straps were put together.  The bodice is covered in tiny little o-shaped arrangements of gold seed beads and the neckline was outlined in alternating seed and bugle beads.  There is also one narrow sash of beading and embroidery that hangs down from the right hip.  I dyed up a scrap of silk velvet in a darker green, and used it to make ivy leaf appliques with couched gold silk beading thread for veins.  These were placed on the left shoulder and right hip.  The idea was to be balanced, without being symmetrical.  Litlle dangly bits of beading hang from the appliques on the shoulder.  

I also cut out an 8x80" strip of chiffon with angled ends for a scarf.  I didn't want to try to pair a lot of jewelry with this dress, as I thought the beading was rather taking care of the bling factor for us.  But her neck just looked too naked without something there.

For the hand bag, I just sketched out a rectangle on a piece of habotai that I dyed gold, then machine basted it to a piece of interfacing and stuck it in an embroidery hoop.  The pattern I just made up after looking at too many art deco designs.  I sketched on four horizontal lines and had V start beading them.  The rest just sort of developed as we went along.

The gloves were white nylon gloves bought from the party shop.  Everything on the internet said that nylon dyes up just like silk, and they were right!  We set V up in a pair of latex gloves to protect her skin, then put the nylon gloves over them and started painting.  The idea was to replicate the purple and red fingers on the characters leather gloves in the movie.

The shoes were simple enough.  A pre-owned and well worn pair of strappy heels were given a new life with a coat of gold leaf.  Simple, yet elegant.  Her hair pin was salvaged from this retro iron work peacock thing that my mom has hanging on her wall.  The thing had this blingy rhinestone bit stuck to the top of it's head, and she hated how out of place it looked.  It had obviously fallen off and been hot glue back on (poorly), so I spent a fair bit of time picking glue out of the settings before soaking it in vinegar and baking soda, then giving all of the metal parts a touch up with gold leaf, as well.

Woo, look at that hemline.  I think that's my single favorite part of this dress.
Eight sided skirt, with round about 8 yards of hem, all hand stitched rolled hem.

On stage, with the Joker.