Costume College: Saturday

The Gala at Costume College is the time to show off your prettiest, most special or favorite costume! And this year did not disappoint! I had a hard time picking photos to share because everyone looked so fabulous! Be warned- many photos ahead!

Ginger of Scene in the Past-Isn't she so fabulous! The color of this gown is so gorgeous in person.

Dress fluffing!

Love the hair!

If you'd like some more background on her costume, you can go here or here.

Lauren of Wearing History.

She looked so fabulous! Aside from just having a stunning dress, she accessorized it perfectly.

I just adore the back of this dress!



Beth of V is for Vintage in a stunning vintage dress.



These three ladies wore gorgeous natural form dresses!

I'm so sad that none of my full length shots of these ladies came out but I love this shot of their gloves and fans. So elegant!



Me! I already posted heaps of photos of this dress so you can check them out here if you missed that post.

19-Teens Day Dress: The Guts

Since so many people liked the post on the closures on my Gala dress, I thought I'd share how my polka dot 'teens day dress closes. I did do some research looking at extant dress to try and figure this one out and I'm pretty happy with it!

The front closes with a snap placket down the side of the inert. I did have to draft my own placket pieces but that's not hard. I hate sewing on snap so I sewed them on a bit far apart.

The skirt closure is on the side, so the extra waist (blouse) fabric is gathered onto a strip of twill tape. You could add snaps here to keep this in place but my waist band is tight enough to hold it in place so I skipped that part.

The waist band closes with two sets of hooks and eyes. I added a little strip of the polka dot fabric that snaps to the under skirt layer to camouflage the opening in the skirt.

I finished the waist band with another waist band piece that is slip stitched over wrong side of the waistband on the dress. Such a pretty way to finish this part of the dress!

The underskirt had a really interesting construction wear the bottom was a separate piece near wear you'd add on the ruffles. I think this is so the upper skirt could be out of something other than the fashion fabric. I just made both out of white since I was going to cover the bottom with ruffles anyways.

HSF #15: White

This is my last Historical Sew Fortnightly project before Costume College! The challenge is White. "White has carried many connotations as a colour, from defining culture and social boundaries, to denoting status, to implying purity, or simply cleanliness.  For this challenge ‘white’ is defined as anything in the white family – from brightest white, through to ivory and cream and all the shades between. Whether you make a simple chemise or an elaborate ballgown, your item should be predominantly white, though it may have touches of other colours."

Tada! This is my 1914-1915 day dress. If you missed the inspiration post, check it out here.



The Challenge: White
Fabric: 4 yds embroidered cotton ($7/yd), 2 yds white broadcloth ($3.50/yd), 2.5 yds yellow broadcloth ($3.50/yd)

Pattern: Past Patterns #8480

Year: 1914-1915

Notions: snaps and hooks and eyes ($3)
How historically accurate is it? Pretty, I think. I used a period pattern and it's all cotton! I used loads of french seams but did end up zig zaging some of them. Not sure if the construction is 100% period but the directions weren't exactly much to go on.

Hours to complete: Started in January but didn't get finished till July! Lots of time spent figuring out how to put the pieces together.
First worn: July '13
Total cost: ~$40

I got a hair piece and this was my first time playing around with it. I'm a bit urked as I ordered the dark brown color but it's chock full of coppery highlights! Thus most of it is not actually brown at all... Oh, well. I used American Duchess' 1912 hair tutorial. 

 Love this dress and can't wait to wear it to Costume College! :D And if you'd like to see more photos, there's a ton more over on my Flickr.

(Update: Also check out my construction details post)

HSF: Inspiration #15 White

Yay for another Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge complete! This challenge was the color white. Today, I'm just going to talk about the inspiration/process for this dress and then we'll get to the actual dress later this week!

Now I started muslining this dress way back in January and was planning on doing it for the Embellish challenge due at the end of February so not all of these inspirations are going to read "white" but I thought this would be a great time to finish off this UFO since it happened to be mostly white!

I kind of started this process backwards and picked my pattern first. I bought several 19-teens patterns over last Christmas break when I knew I would be going to Costume College. My draping/drafting skills are not super awesome so I really wanted to buy a pattern rather than start from scratch. I choose Pattern #8480: Ladies' Dress: Circa 1914-1915 from Past Patterns. The pattern also had options for less ruffles and simpler sleeves.

I loved this cute blue dress from 1912! It also has cute little bows! :D

Lingerie dresses were super popular during the Edwardian period. Lace is super fun.

This dress looks so much like the simpler versions of my pattern. I love the striped accents.

 This dress ended up being my biggest inspiration! I love the pretty embroidery and I found this great embroidered fabric.

Scallops and embroidery! :D

HSF#12: Pretty Pretty Princess

It's Historical Sew Fortnightly time again! This challenge was pretty pretty princess! "Channel your inner princess and her royal wardrobe. Pick a princess, queen, empress, arch-duchess, or a de-facto queen as inspiration for a fabulously royal frock (or other garment). The occasional prince is also most welcome."

Tada!  I took a bit of a different approach to this challenge. I love historical masquerade and fancy dress costumes so this is my 19-teens does Elizabethan fancy dress.

I was inspired by dresses such as these:

 See this pinterest board for sources.

 I ultimately decided to focus my design on the bottom left dress from 1916.

Fabric: 5 yds red home dec ($45), 2.25 yds sheer embroidered leaves ($16), 2 1/3 yd white crepe ($10)
Pattern: VPLL Ladies Dinner Dress c. 1918, Simplicity 3782 (and some drafting)
Year: 1916-1918
Notions: 150 glass pearls (mostly stash $3), snaps ($3), hook and eye ($1)



How historically accurate is it? Ok, so it's made completely from polyester so no good on the fabric. I tried to pick colors and styles that I thought would be a bit of Edwardian and a bit of Elizabethan (and a dash of whatever I felt like). The construction is a bit of each period too. The skirt and sleeves are from a period pattern but the top is a modern Elizabethan costume pattern. Mostly I was just going for the look.



Hours to complete: 30 (hand sewing pearls......)
First worn: June 2013
Total cost: ~$80

I'm pretty happy with this dress. The fit of the sleeves is a bit off, but not so much that I can't wear it. The neckline was a bit wonky in this shoot but I've fixed it. I really like the way the bustles/poofs look on the skirt.

I also whipped up this hat and used the feathers from my Blonde Swan Elizabethan hat. Why? Because feathers are awesome.



Yay, yay gala dress!!!

Inspiration post

Skirt FO post

More photos on Flickr

Those Crazy Edwardian Waistbands

Ok, so I know yesterday I said that I might not do any construction posts, but I did finished the skirt of my gala dress and got off my lazy butt and took some construction pictures. Construction during the 19-teens is very odd and complicated compared to any other period I've done. They had a thing for have each layer closing at a different place and never have one set of closures the same for the top and bottom of the garment. There's not a ton of people who do costuming between 1913 and 1920 so I thought that it would be good to contribute some photos for future sewists trying to figure out this crazy period.

In case you missed yesterday's post, this is the pattern I'm using for the skirt. It's an dinner dress from 1918. (Think dinner dress from Downton Abbey.) I'm doing the pink and yellow/orange style skirt with the side poofs/bustles/thingies.

Skirt! It does drape better when hanging up rather than laying on the floor but I've got a whole bunch of other stuff hanging up in my currently being worked on UFO spot so it was easier to just move this one piece. Instead of interlining the sheer layer with the white layer, I just made them separate layers and joined them at the waist band.

And now for the crazy closures:

The red "tunic" layer has seams in the center front and center back with the closure in the center back. It closes with snaps and a hook and eye. I used red bias binding for the snap placket since I was not going to try and make one out of this crazy poofy fabric (though it would have matched much better if I had!)

Now, the skirt portion has seams at the sides but not at the center front or back. So 1/4 of the tunic layer is on it's own separate waist band piece that connects to the main waist band with snaps. I just made the waist band from two layers of ribbon and it's pieced quite a bit as I was trying to figure out how to make all of the flaps and layers work. But that's ok since it's not going to be seen at all anyways.

The skirt portion then closes with snaps and a hook and eye just like the tunic layer. I did not add any closures to the sheer layer since it'll be covered by the tunic anyways. It just has a narrow hem.

And to add another layer of complexity to the garment, the bustle poofs are attached at the side seams which interferes with the side closure of the skirt part. So instead of being sewn down to the skirt, the gathers are tied off at each end and then snaps are used to hold the gathered sections in place. I just used one at each end and that was enough to hold it to my liking. In the picture on the pattern cover, it looks like there is some kind of decoration over the gathered part but I think I'm going to skip that because my dress is looking quite busy already.

Now, normally this wouldn't be on a separate waist band but would rather be connected directly to the blouse portion of the dress. I decided just to skip on that for several reasons such as I'm using a completely different blouse pattern and I really just didn't feel like bothering with it. The design of the blouse part *should* cover the waist band with no problem, but we'll see.

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount and quality of the directions that came with this pattern. I don't know if the Vintage Pattern Lending Library added directions or by this point in time pattern makers had started adding more directions to their patterns but there was a lot less banging of head against the wall trying to figure out how to get this to work. Some puzzling out was still necessary (especially since I wasn't doing the blouse part) but it went together quite smoothly.

Inspiration: Costume College Gala Dress

Thanks to all who voted on my Costume College Gala Dress poll! A lot of you really wanted an inspiration post so that's what you're getting today! Some of you wanted to be surprised and some wanted to see construction posts so I've not decided what to do about that. The surprise people may win out just because I haven't taken any construction pics yet!

Patterns from the 19-teens are hard to find! I decided on this pattern from the Vintage Pattern Lending Library from 1918. Originally, I was going to do exactly this pattern but I changed my mind and I'm just using the skirt part and I'm drafting the bodice that I really want.

with flash

Fabric was a big issue with this whole gala dress project. A lot of early ideas had to be cut because either I couldn't find appropriate fabric or I couldn't afford appropriate fabric. I ended up with these two home dec fabrics (plus the white crepe underneath the sheer).

no flash

They are all polyester but home dec fabric is soooo expensive even at 100% poly! I found these at Hobby Lobby. They seem to have the best prices I can find locally on home dec fabric. These two were in the $10-12 /yd range verses the $30-40 /yd stuff I found at Jo-Ann's.

The theme of this dress is go big or go home and I've decided to add pearls to all of the little fabric poofs. So far I've sewn on about 150 of these glass pearls that were originally destined for my Renaissance dress but never made it and I need to run out and get some more for the sleeves!