CoCo Count Down

Only 29 sewing days left before I leave for Costume College.  *flails*  Aaaand, I'm stuck at work waffling about what I want to be working on, instead of at home working on it.  So I'm going to do a bit of an accountability post here to try to wrap my head around what's left to do.

Cavalcade of Costumes Exhibit:

1920s Poison Ivy: totally done

- This is one of those costumes that I can't wear myself, which is sad, because I am hella proud of how she turned out.  Since she packs small and has fiddly bits that just love to be appreciated up close, I'll hopefully be bringing Poison Ivy to go on display in the Cavalcade of Costumes exhibit, should there be space left.

Thursday Night Pool Party: Journey to Atlantis (the Booze Fairies group)

Chambord Fairy: about half done

- I've always had a problem with having a concrete plan of attack when doing a totally original project and this has been one of those projects that morphs as it goes along.  I've somehow ended up with a Wild West Steampunk sort of theme going on.  Very stylized saloon girl with the ruffly skirt and corset on the outside.  Skirt and blouse are done.  Still needs a corset to wear on the outside (something that's both reminiscent of that CHAMBORD label strip, yet also kinda steampunky.  Yeah, I know.  Don't make it easy or anything).  I also need to make some spats to wear with my boots and some sort of leather crown topper hat 'thing' since the tiara I'd originally picked out doesn't gel with the Steampunk direction the costume took.


Friday Day: hall costume

1882 Tea Gown: 95% done

- The tea gown was one of those projects that I've worn a couple of times, but not yet had any really nice photos taken in it.  Looking forward to having the opportunity to stop by the Photo Studio and get those done this year.  The dress is done, I just need to make an adjustment to the waistband of the underskirt to make it lay right over the petticoat.  Will take all of 20 minutes once I actually get around to it.  Should also figure out something to do with my hair, as it not grown out enough to do much in the way of historical styling with.


Friday Night Social: Around the World in 80 Days

Hanbok (Korean)  Totally done.  This is my Historical Masquerade entry from Costume-Con 31.

- I will find an excuse to wear this costume at least once to probably every con I'll ever go to.  Wicked comfortable and such pretty colors.  The outfit is done, but I need to pick a new pair of shoes to wear with it, as the old ones had to be tossed.  As the skirts are floor length, any nondescript pair of flats should do.  If I'm lucky, my hair might be JUST long enough to pull back into a tiny little pony tail that I can hook the bun onto.

Saturday Day: hall costume

1950s Avengers Dress: done (enough)

- Yay for comfy and fun hall costumes.  If I have time, I'd like to sort out some accessories themed after individual Avengers, but that's pretty low on the priority list.


Saturday Night Gala: Characters

Clayr from the Abhorsen series by Garth Nix: done.

- I'll admit, I've been waffling on what to wear to the Gala this year.  The big group of 18th century court gowns picked back up and is really happening this year, so I kinda wanted to participate in that.  But I wore that last year and won't have the added luggage space from the spousal unit this year and was trying to pack conservatively.  So I'm like 90% certain that I'm going to partner up with one of my costuming besties and wear the dress from her big masquerade entry at this year's Costume-Con (that I haven't posted about yet because I'm waiting for pictures better than the ones taken on our cell phones).  It's another comfy costume that packs down well, doesn't have a corset and is worn with flats.  It's a character from a book and it should be fairly easy to sit at the dinner table in it.

Sunday day: Breakfast with the Bennets

My Regency day dress is going to be entirely built around getting
to show off the bib-front smocked apron that I made last year,
when I didn't have anything to wear with it.
Total outfit progress: about 30% done.

- The nice thing about Sunday this year is that I'm not doing the afternoon Tea and won't have to negotiate a costume change between meals.  I'm teaching a workshop on handkerchief hemming that afternoon, so a downplayed Regency day gown seems about right.  I only had a Regency ballgown and I'd worn with a pair of short stays that I didn't really like the fit of. So, other than the apron, this project was essentially starting from scratch.  The aforementioned bestie helped me drape a set of full length stays when she came out for Halloween like a two years ago, so I pulled those out of the drawer and set to work.  The stays are now done except the boning and binding.  I've also made up a cap of ridiculousness to cover my hair.  I've got the petticoat from the ballgown that I can use, and the apron is done.   All that's really left to start on is the dress.  The boning is on order.  Once that arrives, I can finish up the stays and start draping on the dress.   I think I've settled on using the striped yellow cotton blend in the picture below that was acquired from the "scrap" table at Figments & Filaments.  I don't know who out there considers six yards of fabric a scrap, but I'm certainly not complaining.

bib-front Regency day dress

This dress will be long-sleeved and relatively simple.  At least minimalist on the embellishments.  And the front closure should be somewhat adjustable, limiting some of the stress from fittings.  I'll also need to make up a chemisette, but I ought to be able to bang out a simple tucker or even reuse one of the late 18th century fichus if time  becomes a constraint.  


So yeah.  Lots to do, but lots of it is little projects and finishings that I should be able to bang out relatively quickly once I set to them.  It feel better just putting it all together like this.  Now to print out a to-do list to hang above the desk with these guys and I'll be good to go.

Chambord Fairy: skirt

Preparations for Costume College are beginning to pick up speed.  As I was clearing out the crafting kingdom of finished pieces for Costume Con, I set out a little inspirational pile of my CoCo projects to be there to welcome me home.  The 1950s Avengers dress there at the bottom is already done, so the next step was up to the pink and gold ridiculousness in the upper left.

There's a cluster of us that are doing a twist on the Absinthe fairy, picking a new booze and a fairy style of our own choosing.  I decided to go with Chambord, mostly because I liked the sound of the flavor and was digging on the burgundy and gold color scheme.

Then plotting led to ruffles and ruffles led me to a tutorial from Tea in a Teacup about making a steampunk skirt and a cohesive theme was born: late Victorian Steampunk Chambord Fairy.  Since the skirt was the driving force behind the costume, I started with that first.  I used the suggested cutting diagram as more of a guideline.  I originally thought to use a crisp silk like tafetta, but finding the right color at a reasonable price just wasn't working out for me.  So I ended up getting the hot pink shantung pictured above for something like $11/yd and I tried my hand at dyeing it.  The fabric took up the burgundy dye beautifully, but the texture was forever changed by the super hot dye bath.  What was once shiny and crisp had been turned into something dense and of an interesting texture...

AND I LOVED IT!  I started playing with scraps and totally fell for the petal-soft fabric with the tiny cross-hatch appearance.  I was getting a Moulin Rouge can-can dancer type feeling going on, and the ruffles just made it happen.  The skirt has a raised front panel that shows off some leg, and a faux-bustled back with two extra layers of ruffles.  Rather than a boring old zip or button closure, I embraced the hardware-heavy steampunk style and put in some gold grommets for lacing.

Three tiers of ruffles in across the back.  Each row has a three and a six inch roll of ruffles, set off with a strip of gold satin piping.

The bulk of the skirt is flat-lined with brown cotton bed sheet.  I ended up cutting the narrow side panels away a bit, to give the skirt a bit more of a swept-back look.  But this mean that a bit of the brown could be seen by someone sitting.  I'm going to add some twill tape ties to the seam between side and back panels, using these to bustle the skirt a bit.  This should help that side panel to curl inwards a bit and hide the lining.  It'll also pull the back hem up just enough to keep it from trailing on the floor.  I also took a lesson from my Avengers dress on built-in petticoats and used extra sheeting to make a small built-in bustle for added umph.

I ended up doing bias-cut ruffles and giving them a rolled hem by hand.  The super-tight weave post-dye bath didn't really need finishing on the raw edges, but the fluttery fabric was so thin that I worried the ruffles would just hang limp and lifeless.  The rolled hem makes me think of the curled edges of a rose petal, and I flipped the ruffles over so that you see the 'wrong' side of them, added additional texture.  All told, the skirt has roughly 30 yards of ruffle.  I got through the entire first season of Daredevil working on that nonsense.

Next up, I need a bodice.

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?

Figments & Filaments 2015

Last weekend I attended the sophomore year of Figments & Filaments here in Kansas City (Overland Park, if you want to get specific).  It's exciting to have a costuming convention starting up in my own town.  And there was SO much awesome packed into such a small con.

I got to go to a great panel about the 14th C V-neck gown (houppelande) by Robin Netherton.  She had many thinky thoughts on the evolution of the neckline and the construction there of.  It left me wanting to make another go at making a houppelande, and possibly not out of heavy upholstery fabric this time.  I also hit a panel on the use of silk and gold in Medieval textiles by Gale Owen Crocker that left me wanting to embroider everything in gold.  A panel on leather working got the inspiration running and lead me make an inaugural visit to Tandy Leather for basic supplies.  I also caught Jillian Venters catch-all panel on Goth Style which left me wanting to tweak and mod my way into something fabulous.  I also hosted a panel on 18th C Womens' Fashions, focusing on the social and political climate that they were a part of.  Wow, but it's been a while since I've had to do such concentrated prep work for something.  It was like college all over again.  But on the bright side, I now have a rough draft of a good programming topic put together that I can refine before bringing out another time.  Not that spending hours collecting images of portraits and extant garments wasn't a fabulous use of my time.  And I solidified a lot of things that I kinda knew, but didn't know well.  Especially with regards to the timeline of events in the French and English courts and the people involved.

Pretty much everything else that I got up to can be summarized in photos.  Luckily, the official con photographers and the couple of others that were flitting around were great about catching lots of photos of everyone and I got caught at one point or another in every costume that I wore. 

I put the His & Hers 18th C Court Ensemble in the costume gallery.
Photo by BMoon Studios

I finally caught a few photos of me wearing my 1880s tea gown.
Photo by Tom Ulrick

Obligatory cup of tea with the tea gown.
Photo by BMoon Studios

As a guest lecturer, I scored an unexpected invite to the VIP meet-n-greet on opening night.
Photo by BMoon Studios.  

I overslept and missed the opportunity to wear my chemise dress to my 18th c fashion panel,
but it made a great outfit for lounging about on Saturday afternoon.
Photo by BMoon Studios.

Finishing my white work embroidery project started back at Costume College last year.
Photo by Tom Ulrick.

Aaaaand, I got to have a right and proper geek-gasm getting my photo taken with the lovely gentleman from
Iron Brothers of Topeka.  I've admired their suits from afar at other, more crowded events.  So it was a real
treat to get to check them out in a much more subdued venue.  Photo by IBOT.

Stephanie caught a photo of me in the Queen of Hearts costume that I wore for the fashion show.
The look was well-received, but I creep myself out whenever I see pictures of that makeup job.
The goal was to minimize the pretty and over-emphasize masculine mouth and jawline.  *shivers*

And here I am with Kimberly, scaring off new friends just as fast as I can make them.
Photo stolen from Stephanie.

It was SO hard staying in character for pictures.  Everyone seemed to get a kick out of reacting to an angry queen,
but I would bust up laughing in a matter of seconds.
Photo by BMoon Studios.

Lazy Sunday costume of my Medieval Sideless Surcoat.  No wig, corset, makeup, or heels.

HSM April: War & Peace - the 14th Century Linen Coif

April's Historical Sew Monthly Challenge was War & Peace: The extremes of conflict and long periods of peacetime both influence what people wear.  Make something that shows the effects of war, or of extended peace.  

After getting dressed up for pictures in my new side-less surcoat, I was reminded that, while I love having the veil, I hate the work it takes to get it on right.  I had been wearing my veil pinned to a matching silk fillet (strap around the head) and barbette (strap under the chin), but the process of pinning those pieces in place, then pining the veil to them had grown cumbersome.  I was looking for something both more secure, and requiring less fiddling to get and keep on straight.  Hence the coif!

There are any number of excellent patterns and instructions out there, but the one that I found most useful was posted by the Maniacal Medievalist, which used lots of measurements and math to get something close-fitting and properly fit.  I made slight alterations to the pattern in that edge against the face is bound in the same narrow strip of fabric that extends down into the ties, rather than having a turned under edge with separate ties attached.  I felt that this made my ties more secure, but had the drawback of leaving me with short ties, due to the size of the scrap of linen that I was using.  As much as having things secured under the chin tend to annoy me, I'm thinking I may just leave the ties undone, or tie them instead behind the neck.  Either way, the cap stays relatively secure.

I left a bit of ease in the back so I'd have a place to stuff my hair, if I succeed in growing it out.

Octopus made a fantastically patient model for me while I kept fiddling with camera settings.

Seen from the back.  Lower edge was turned under twice and whip stitched.

Once the cap was complete, I tried it on and was a bit disappointed in the center seam.  The two pieces were sewn together, then the seam allowances folded back under themselves and secured to their respective halves. I was a touch unsure about the security of the seam, and so decided to do some sort of decorative top-stiching to secure it.  Well that went downhill and I ended up doing a more elaborate layered herringbone design reminiscent of some of the St Birgitta's caps I'd come across in my research.

Detail of the herringbone stitching down the center seam.

The details for the challenge

What the item is (and how it is a product of war or a lengthy period of peace: Medieval linen coif.  I kind of see the entire medieval period as an unsteady period of war and peace, and war again.  However, 600 years in the future, historians could probably say the same of today.

Fabric: lightweight white linen
Pattern: here
Year: 14th century
Notions: linen thread, bamboo viscose crochet thread for the embroidery
How historically accurate is it? 9.5/10, with a half-point docked for the embroidery thread
Hours to complete: about 8, starting from measuring and drafting out the pattern.  About half of that was spent on the embroidery.
First worn: Planning to wear it for Figments & Filaments later this month
Total cost: maybe $2.  All of the materials were in the stash and really only a very small bit of them had to be used.

Naka-Kon 2015

I spent the weekend out at Naka-Kon, Kansas City's Anime convention.  While anime is not really my thing, I've been involved with this convention in one capacity or another for going on seven years now, so it's always held a warm spot in my heart.  The con has been growing by leaps and bounds lately and this year, they had over 8500 attendees - and that's without counting hundreds of badges handed out to staff and volunteers and guests and vendors and press...  So yeah, it's gotten kinda big.  I went out on Thursday night and helped out with registration, and took the opportunity to wear my "angel and devil on my shoulder" bobble head get up.  Yes, that's Captain America and Iron Man.  No, you shouldn't have to ask which is the angel and which the devil.

After I went home on Thursday night, I got the itch to make up this yukata that I'd bought a lovely water lily cotton for something like $1.99.  It was one of those "simple" projects that I always meant to do up, but never seemed to get around to and I found I was just annoyed with myself enough to power through it.  From sketching out the pattern and doing my math (had to get creative with the cutting layout, as I only had 3.75 yards to work with), the whole project took just under six hours to complete.  But as I was approaching that third hour, disaster struck when I realized that I had cut one of my front panels upside down.  The left front panel, to be precise.  The exact panel which should be folded over on top of the right in a properly worn kimono.  Cue minor bits of swearing.  However, genius idea struck.  See, the major faux pas in wearing a kimono wrapped right over left is that wrapping a kimono in that fashion is how the dead are traditionally dressed for burial.  Soooo, I decided to be a ghost.  And let me tell you.  Googling for pictures of Japanese ghosts for makeup ideas at four in the morning does not prepare you for a restful night of sleep.  But, a lovely You Tube tutorial was found and all was well with the world.

People seemed to fluctuate between staring and being unable to make eye contact.  And let's be honest here.  I scared the crap out of myself whenever I wandered by a mirror.  Creepy veiny eye bruising aside, my wig was BLONDE!

Creepy bottom-lit cosplay photoshoot for the win.

Saturday was eaten up as a workmanship judge for the cosplay contest.  I swear, workmanship is my favorite kind of judging.  I get to see all of these amazing costume up close, and then they TELL ME HOW THEY DID IT!  I am still amazed by all that can be accomplished in the world of faux armor, and got several ideas for painting techniques that I hope to one day take advantage of.

photo credit to Satoshi Inoue

I always have trouble deciding what to wear when I'm judging a contest.  There's a part of me that thinks that need to "wear my credentials', but sometimes hard to balance.  It has to be a costume that I can drive to and from the convention center in, as well as comfortably sit in for hours, and that eliminates pretty much all of the corseted costumes.  I don't want to wear anything that has lots of makeup or body paint when I expect to be fondling other peoples' costumes.  And at an anime con, I'm always afraid that the historical garb would be completely lost on anyone.  So, kimono it is, then.  I ended up over-sleeping on Saturday and just threw on my hand-painted haori jacket over street clothes and had to make do with that.  Felt a little odd being the only non-character, unwigged person on the judging panel, but perhaps I got lucky and they all just thought I was super confident, or something.

Now I just need to find myself an anime character that I can make a cosplay of for next year.


edited to add on 3/06/16: basic kimono pattern manipulation to accommodate wide hips.

Sideless Surcoat - Historical Sew Monthly Stashbusting Challenge

Building on the generic Medieval fantasy costume that I started working on last month, I made up a relatively straight-forward sideless surcoat.  Went the easy route and again brought out the Burda 7977 for this instead of using one of any number of fabulous tutorials that are out there.  The goal here was to bang something out quickly so that I could show off the kirtle at Figments & Filaments here in Kansas City next month.

I was already planning to avoid buying anything new for this project, so it fit in nicely with the Historical Sew Fortnightly Monthly challenge for March which was "Stashbusting".  I found a five yard section of wool suiting that had a subtle brown and tan twill weave to it that I picked up at a steep discount eons ago with the notion that surely I could use it for something.  Thems dangerous words right there.  Well, to make it a little less 'shiny suit' and a little more Fourteenth Century, I serged the raw edges and dumped the lot of it into the washing machine on warm, and dried it on medium heat.  This resulted in an every so slight bit of felting which softened the overall hand and color nicely.  The contrasting was done in black silk velvet that was leftover from my Queen of Hearts project, and plus the thread, that's all there is to it.

Lol.  My neighbors must think we're so weird.

Not sure why it's riding up like that in the back.
Must have caught on the belt I'm wearing over the kirtle.

Another shot at that paternoster and the decorative edging on the sleeves of my kirtle.

You can almost tell in the close up shot above, but for the velvet, I just laid out the pattern pieces and cut strips about four inches in from the arm hole openings.  The velvet was sewn to the WRONG side of the arm openings, then folded to the outside, encasing the seams.  I then top-stitched about 1/4" from the edge, then again about 3" in from the edge and trimmed off the excess.  The top stitching largely gets lost in the pile of the velvet, so I didn't think it detracted from the historical look too much.  To finish those raw cut edges, I just used black silk thread to whip stitch and short intervals all the way around.  The collar and hemline were treated in much the same way