This black silk robe a la francaise is about 80% hand-sewn, more than I ever intended. I've retrimmed it 4x now!
Recreating the pink portrait of Mary Queen of Scots had long been a dream, & I finally did it for my birthday.
My drag alter-ego is Leonard Autie, hairdresser to Marie Antoinette. He sometimes gets a new suit for Carnevale.
I first wore the outfit at the SCA West Kingdom October Crown. I wore the doublet with a cartridge-pleated skirt made of purple tone-on-tone stripe drapery type fabric that I’d made a few months earlier (for an outfit that never panned out). And the weekend before this event, I made a tall-crowned hat inspired by
Not the I’m bragging, but I don’t see what the fuss is about sleeves. They’re pretty easy. My sleeves probably don’t look that good to anyone else, but I like them. They go together fine, no big stress, not like the strum und drang I hear from so many other costumers when it comes time
So much accomplished and it just doesn’t look like it. *sigh* Spent all weekend sewing, and, go figure, it would be the last, icky-hot weekend of summer too. But the result looks like actual clothing and is in a wearable state. First, there was a lot of fussing with the lining. And that darn neckline.
At the Art Deco Society of California’s Gatsby Summer Afternoon 2009… See the rest of my Gatsby pix on Flickr.
This doublet that’s been giving me such problems isn’t what it seems to be. I’ve had images in my head, but I’ve been using a pattern (well, an idea of a pattern from PoF3, the 1580s doublet) that’s based in the wrong time period. Doh! The neckline and sleeves I’ve been fantasizing about are all
After all those muslins, it was time to cut some real fabric. I had a nice mid-weight black wool for the outside (it’ll be interlined with something sturdy and lined with something soft later; I may add boning at the center front to keep the closure tidy and straight too). I sewed up the sides
After buying the pictured jewelry on eBay and a pink paper parasol that I may paint black stripes on, I mostly ignored this project for a week. Well, at some point I did finish the sash and make rosettes on pinbacks as closures/trim. And then, finally, last night, I hemmed the dress. With pink silk.
This is a pretty vague concept so far … I have this unusual black and grey fabric, 100% polyester (because I don’t care!), woven thistle / pomegranate pattern that’s rather 16th-century by way of Art Deco, with a nice supple hand. So far, I’m thinking it’ll be good as a kirtle, perhaps with sleeves. There’s
Pattern-drafting is not my strong suit, but I don’t live near enough to, well, anyone it seems for me to easily beg/barter that service on a regular basis. Thus, I had to start on my own for to make this 16th-century doublet. *sigh.* I was inspired by what I could suss out of the seam
I actually sewed this morning, before going to work. Shocking! Instead of laying around in bed listening to NPR (one of my all-time favourite activities, but one that I do fairly frequently), I got up and got dressed (in a fairly cute CorpGoth outfit, by the way). But I still had 40 minutes before my
This time, it’s stripey! But still a big black sack! The most unattractive dress shape possible! But it’s historically accurate, it technically fits, and I’m going for it! I can never get the hang of mirror pix, but it does look better on me than on the dressform. Marginally 🙂 Just need to hem it,
I’m half an hour into an one-hour dress for Gatsby. By the way, the one-hour dress pattern takes me about two days to make, though I did just finish all the “tricky” patterning, and I even bumped it up a notch by trying the two-piece pattern this time. It’s from a 1925 pattern booklet that
Don’t know if this will actually happen in time for this year’s ADSC Gatsby Summer Afternoon. But I bought a new hat at Convergence 15, a lovely hot pink confection trimmed with big black feathers and a whole bird, made by Caveat Emptor. Which is ’20s-ish in style and makes me reallyreallyreally want a dress
I’ve loved this dress since I first saw the portrait in a book, sometime in the early 1990s. It’s the classic refutation of “pink is not period” for renaissance faire or SCA. It’s super-girly. It’s fantastic! It’s very Pretty Pretty Princess! This has been my dream gown, and dammit, I’m going to make it. So
Another fabulous collaboration with my dear Donna of Original Sin Design! I’d gotten this piece of hot pink sari fabric from a costumer’s garage sale and knew it would “pop” against black. But I didn’t know what style of what. Then fabric.com had a sale on black silk shantung, and Donna suggested we both wear
