It was kind of a girlie weekend, in more ways than three. Saturday, I did a ton of pleating and pinning and re-pleating and pinning to build the petticoat for my Carnivale outfit. I just took two widths of silk — made the back one half-again as wide, for some oomph — and stitched them
I set the sleeves into the black francaise. They fit and look decent. I see how I could have made them look better by curving in the sleeve head in the front, but it’s not unattractive as-is. Good enough for government work, as they say. The overall fit of the gown is pretty darn awesome,
Thanks to help from this Threads article (which is actually the cheatsheet for a full article that’s more about theory), I successfully graded a pattern that I’d scaled up from Hunnisett. I’m pretty decent at sleeves, but I usually guess and have to make three muslins to get the right fit. The Threads article showed
Made great progress on the Carnivale gown today, although these photos will not seem like much. However, I’ve now sewn all the bits that Kendra draped and pinned on me. The only things left on the black francaise portion are to bind the back neck edge, draft sleeves, and hem the skirt. The only semi-hard
Right now, I’m avoiding going back to working on the black francaise. I got the back seams done earlier, and I could totally see why sewing them by hand would have made sense. But I did it on the machine because it was a smidge faster (well, a lot faster by me) and a lot
Kendra RULES!!! She draped a 18th-century francaise on me. It’s black dupioni silk, thus hard to photograph, but trust me, it’s great. The fit is perfect, and she pinned it all together so I just have to sew it down. Last photo has some of the contrast fabric and trim thrown about to give a
We leave for Carnivale in one month and 26 days!??!!11!!!!11!!!??!!!!1! *** This freakout brought to you because I finally looked at the little counter app thingy on my iPhone. And, um, gulp, I don’t have a SINGLE STITCH of my costume done. PANIC!!!!11!!!1!!!!
I just found these tatted lace masks on Etsy (via Instructables, where I was doing research for work, honest). That could be perfect for Carnivale! See, at Antonia Sautter’s atelier, I tried on a lace mask that fit pretty nicely over my glasses. It was intended to. And I’d thot about trying to make such
What I wanted to find at this year’s trip to the LA Garment District was something to go with this hot pink and silver (polyester) sari I’ve had in the Stash for years: I made a sketch of my costume concept in Tara Maginnis’ drawing class at Costume College (shown at left). The idea is
So I updated my swatch book last night. Which required measuring of some yardage. And I don’t think I have enough fabric for my intended Carnivale costume. The black shantung embedded with shisha mirrors is only 4 yards of 45″ wide material, and something tells me that just won’t be enough for a robe a
Well, no in-progress updates or anything! Half a year later, I picked up the project again about two weeks before the Lumieres Summer Pique-nique. I wanted something new to wear, as I’d worn the same pink francaise to two other picnics at the same location already. Also, I got the idea of buying a big
This sort of robe a la francaise held up in a polonaise would be both very pretty and quite practical for Carnivale next year. Can’t have a train or anything dragging about in the damp, and despite the potential cuteness, I don’t want to go all lolita-short. That example circa 1760s-1770s is more accurate. I
Seriously, why do you costumer folk love her? Nice books, but she made diagrams of clothing worn by mutant pygmies. Im-freakin’-possible to scale up from for real people, unless you enjoy frustration or are some kind of architectural genius. I was seduced into thinking I might use those books for genuine costuming applications (as opposed
I should be doing something productive, but instead, I’m fantasizing about costume … the costume is the zone-bodice 18th-century gown, because some delightful pale blue silk twill I ordered from Fashion Fabrics Club arrived last night (before I went out to dinner for my stepdad’s birthday). It’ll be the perfect contrast for the black embroidered
I’m really hankering to work on 18th-century stuff. No event in the immediate future, just a bunch of fabric calling my name. Specifically, it’s the blue caraco. And I’m wanting to make it a zone bodice now. Would a caraco jacket be zone-fronted? I couldn’t find any examples in Kendra’s real women’s clothing links (actually,