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

Going German

Saturday evening, my husband and I hit the German Festival. I'm not German and I really am not that big a fan of German food (or really anything German), but at just $2 for parking, you really can't get any cheaper for Saturday night. Plus my husband was really up for trying some German beers.

Think I can pull off the blonde bar maid look? lol.

There were quite a few varieties of beer, but the planners seriously underestimated the number of people as they ran out of wine and one kind of beer by 7:30/8 pm. As I don't drink beer, I was pretty bummed that they ran out of wine, but I did sample a funnel cake and a strawberry banana smoothie.

They did have root beer on tap in these cute barrels too!

There was a stand with some great reprints of vintage magazine covers, ads and art work with some originals sprinkled throughout.

Needless to say, I spent quite a while browsing in this booth!

I picked up a reprint of this 1914 edition of The Designer. I just love these outfits! Ones I left behind included a darling 30s gal with puppies getting of a train (had they been cats, this one would have come home with me), a 1910s cover of Modern Priscilla with a gal in a bathing suit, and a 1918 painting of 6/7 gals in bathing suits on a rock. They mostly had things from 1900s-1930s which I'm assuming has something to do with copyright laws. I'm not sure what they were doing at the German Festival since only a few things were in German, but I'm glad they were there!

I tried a makeup look from Lauren Rennells makeup book. I've been really loving this book! It's chock full of information! I've also been experimenting with changing the shape of my brows with makeup. It's been semi successful. The makeup does tend to come off pretty easily and I don't have the best color to match my brows. I was amazed at how much your brows can change the look of your face!!

Hope you all had a lovely weekend too!