Oh, Look! It's a Project Wrap Up!

Shocking, I know. Remember that Russian Court gown I teased and then never did anything about? Well, this entry is an attempt to make up for that. "Long time coming," you say? I totally agree with you. 

I finished and delivered this project last August (I know, I know. I'm the worst blogger ever). I haven't asked P about getting photos of her in it, so you'll have to make do with images of a dress form. Just pretend there's a pretty girl in it, okay?

So. 

The inspiration image: Maria Fedorovna by Makovskiy, 1912

After lacing P into her new corset, I fit the toile. Like you do. I have no pictures, because who takes pictures of their poor, unsuspecting, client who just got off work? Not me. So pretend there's a picture of the fitting. It went pretty well.

Onto the building process! First off, this was a time-consuming project, even with cutting corners on embroidery and such. P had a specific budget and time limit (and I pushed that deadline way farther than I should have), so instead of the insane amount of silver embroidery depicted, we agreed to echo the look with rhinestone and sequin appliques. P also preferred an aubergine (how's that for a $2 word?) velvet over the lighter purple in the portrait. So when you see black velvet in my crappy cell phone photos, know that it's actually eggplant.

On to the pictures! 

Laying down the trim was pretty straight forward, there was just a lot of it - about 150 yards, in fact. After marking off my lines and stitching down the wider trims, I started on the lattice work. The silver lattice on just the skirt took roughly 16 hours. On an industrial sewing machine. Did I mention this was a labor-intensive project?

Here's another shot of the skirt while I was sewing the lattice. See those stars in the bottom bit of the photo? Those are my PJs. More precisely, those are the PJs I stole from my fiance. Yes, I work in my pajamas. Don't judge me.

The skirt/train after I finished up the lattice. How many times can I say 'lattice' in this post? Too many. If the fabric looks small, check out the hip curve (curved metal ruler) laying next to it. That hip curve is 24" long.

And here's the train after I finished with the silver trim. So much trim. So much. Again, the picture makes this look like a smallish piece of fabric. Wait till we get to the end result.

And then the fun part: Laying out appliques and finding a configuration I liked! Fun! Well, it was fun for me, anyway. After coming up with about 20 different patterns, I narrowed it down to this one.

And then I changed my mind. This ended up being "The One" after I bought a bunch of other appliques, because of course more is more.

Sewing on appliques. So thrilling.

And then came the sleeves. Second verse, same as the first. Mark, trim, lattice. So much lattice.

And more trim to finish off the raw lattice edges.

And then came appliques! Because more is more!

For some reason, I never took construction photos of the bodice. or the underskirt. Because I'm a clown. But it did happen, I swear. This was after making the main part of the bodice, itself. I was testing out applique placement. I love appliques, especially rhinestone ones. But after this project, I needed a year away from them. 

Closeup of the bodice detail. Thrilling. I am in love with those buttons, however. They were the right ones for the job, and added a bit more glitz without detracting from the rest of the garment. 

After the sleeves and bodice were completed, I hand stitched the sleeves into the armscye. Normally I wouldn't do that, but these had some cartridge pleating at the back to give them a bit more oomph. So far, so good.

And then I finished the train! See? I told you it was kinda big. I ended up making the train and underskirt as one garment, to avoid having too many pieces to keep track of. I have no idea if this was how it was done in 1912, but from a costumer standpoint, it made the most sense.

Big Finish!

See? More totally is more. Overall, I was quite please about how this turned out. I would have loved to add more silver embroidery and maybe some soutache to more closely follow the original portrait, but quite frankly there just wasn't time or budget for it. Again, I don't have photos of P in the dress, so just pretend that this cheapo dress form is her. 

Here's a closeup of the completed bodice, taken by my mother. She's a good photographer, no? You can see more (read: better) of her work on her flickr site.

Post Mortem

I'm still chuffed with the way this turned out. Would I have liked to add more silver trim? Yes. Did I have to take a break from purple fabric for a few months? Heck yes. But it was a joy to work on, a pleasant challenge, and the customer knew what she wanted, which made it easier to build this costume. I have no idea what event she wore it to, but I hope she enjoyed it and knocked the socks off of everyone she met.

Whoops, Where Did That Year Go?

Apologies to anyone who attempted to follow my exploits, only to be foiled by my lack of posts. Seriously, I am a jerk. I made promises. I hinted at projects that would be blogged. And then I lost track of it all. I'm a jerk, and I'm sorry.

Also, despite my profuse apologies, I have no images to share with you at the moment. I have a number of projects that were completed, including those for Giovanni de Medici, Luigi Gaddi, Giovannie Salvatore de Malatesti, and the Russian Court Gown. These will all be given attention, and they will be posted. Just not today. I also have a number of other projects that I have finished or am currently working on, but some of them will not be given a blog post until after the Renaissance Pleasure Faire has opened. For nondisclosure reasons, of course.

Oh! And other news: I have been hired as costumer at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Irwindale! Yay, me! Also why I can't share everything I make with the world. You'll just have to come and see my work for yourself, while enjoying historical reenactment, artisan crafts, stellar entertainment, and delicious pear cider. It's a tough life.

Keep your eyes peeled for things to come soonish (I hope).

Revisiting Old Work, Florentine Barbie Edition

This really isn't an update. At the moment, I'm elbow deep in costuming for Mario Sforza, Giovanni de Medici, Pietro Medici, Luigi Gaddi, Salvatore Malatesti, my mother, and the Russian court gown. But I'm taking a break to talk about a sottana I made last year. I say sottana, but it was more than that. Let's cover it piece by piece, shall we?

The Inspiration

This a portrait by Batista Moroni. I honestly don't know the exact date of it. But when I started planning out a costume for my new role at Faire, I knew I wanted pink. Pink is an often overlooked color, and it's commonly thought to be a historiccally inaccurate color. But as you can see, pink did exist - now that I have looked for examples of pink clothing, I see it in a lot of Florentine portraiture.

My character is basically a mistress of Pietro de Medici, played by my fiancé. My character has little purpose in life beyond gambling, entertaining, and being decorative. Emphasis on the decorative. More than once, I have compared my persona to Paris Hilton's chihuahua: Cute, but not much good for anything. Pietro's fashion accessory. This concept is the basis for my costume. And also, why I went with pink.

The Corset/Bodies

This isn't a historically accurate pair of bodies. We have no proof of bodies existing in England before 1590, and none whatsoever of them in use in Florence during this period. And they certainly didn't look like this. But, corsets/bodies are an accepted Faireism, they help achieve the right shape, and they distribute the weight of the 10ish yards of fabric in which we cloak ourselves. Why does it not have the shoulder straps? 16th century Florentine clothing for women places a high importance on the décolletage, with shoulder straps placed on the points of the shoulders. With necklines the way they were, the standard Effigy Bodies pattern would look silly, with its high strap placement. 

The other slight oddity about this corset is that it relies almost entirely on hemp cord to keep its shape.

I first ran a test patch, to figure out ratios for shrinkage. This is an incredibly important step, as the added thickness can reduce the original waist measurement by 1"-2". Your results may vary.

After the rate of shrinkage was identified, I made my adjustments and sewed it up in the standard way. I made 1/4" channels, and ran four lengths of hemp cord through the channels, using an umbrella rib. 

The advantages of hemp boning? It breathes, has enough give to be comfortable, allows me to slouch and bend sideways, and is machine washable. I did end up sewing four pieces of boning into this corset, to increase rigidity in the center front, and to help better displace the weight of my skirts off my kidneys. That done, I absolutely love this corset. Now I just need to scrub the taco sauce I spilled on it while driving to our last invent.

The Underskirt

The underskirt was pretty straightforward. I found a copper silk damask hiding in Michael Levine's, jammed it under my juki, added piping and some felt to the hem, and cartridge pleated it to a waistband. See how that hem just floats out away from the body? Felt is magic. There's no bumroll or farthingale in that picture; the skirt just does that on it's own. Magic, I tell you.

The Sottana

So, yeah. The sottana also went pretty smoothly. Mostly. I was in a rush to get the dress done, and didn't bother to make sure that the red velvet I bought doesn't bleed. It does. I can never get this dress wet. That said, I drafted a sleeve, then sliced it down the front of the sleeve. I added my red trim, my gold trim, and ribbon twists to approximate the look of the sleeves in the portrait. I then went back and stitched gold tubular beads to each twist to look like aglets. And then more twists to connect the sleeves to the shoulders, and the puffy baragoni that typify Florentine style.

Here's the bodice and sleeve, pinned to a form. I do this sort of thing a lot as I work, to make sure I'm really getting the result I want. What you can't see is how after the person who was going to help me left, I ended up having to fit the bodice to myself. This is incredibly hard. Lacing yourself into a back-lacing corset is a cake walk, by comparison. Because of this, there were some minor fit issues. That said, I did all right, all things considered.

Here is a shot while my sweet fiance helped me pin the hem. Poofy. I swear this skirt has relaxed quite a bit since this photo was taken. The day after he pinned the hem, I went ahead and chopped off the excess fabric, stitched it all up, completed the velvet guards,  and threw the ensemble back on to see how it all looked. The pink hem was an inch shorter than the underskirt. I freaked.

I tearfully called the fiancé, who came over to help. I talked to the kind, loving, people on the Elizabethan Costuming group, who gave me very helpful solutions.I was still ready to throw it all out and quit. Drew convinced/coaxed/wheedled me into the whole getup, had me jump up and down a couple times, and twirl, before facing the mirror. And what do you know? It was perfectly fine. The hem was where it needed to be. This was definitely a lesson in stress management.

Accessories

 Because no outfit is complete without accessories, I made myself a rosary with freshwater pearls and some glass beads I found at Bohemian, in the garment district.  I also bought (not at the same place) and Indian wedding necklace set, complete with tikka and earrings. I cannibalized the earrings and tikka, then wrapped them with wire onto a brass headband, with some gold roses, flower-ish brass bead caps and garnets from a broken necklace.

 This is my girdle. I found a fun brooch on eBay and added it to a string of beads I found at Michael's. Simple.
 Not the girdle I wanted, but it works.

I also started working on a zibelleno. I molded the head out of Sculpey, then added some brass filigree, micro pearls, and chain, to create a harness. I glued this to a repurposed marten pelt. I haven't used it yet, though, as I haven't settled on how I want to attach it to my dress.

And then it got hot, and I needed a fan. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of the whole thing. I bought 100 bleached peacock feathers from Perial, downtown. Perial is absolutely amazing for feathers, masks, and trim. A lot of their customers are bellydancers and burlesque performers, and by golly do they know their customers. My fiancé cut down a dowel for me. I painted it, glued on an acorn knob, then sandwiched it between two manila paper circles. To this base, I glued my feathers and added some wood shapes from Home Depot. It took forever to set completely.

 And then we went to the Bristol Faire in Wisconsin, and I needed another fan. Really, it was an excuse to make another accessory, but I didn't want to smoosh my feather fan in my suitcase. So Drew and I made a flag fan. Drew took a dowel and, with the magic of carpentery, affixed it to a flat wood piece for the fan. We hammered a veritable buttload of filigree pieces to cover the fan handle, and added a brass lamp finial to the end. This was then covered in shrink tubing to protect the filigree. Not period in the least, but it sure is effective.

A friend gave me an ornament from Florence earlier in the year, and I copied its fleur de lis on some paper and added a border. I traced this onto fabric and embroidered the design, adding some gold spangles. Because I'm Florentine Barbie. The other side of the fan has a mirror, surrounded by more gold embroidery and pearls. Because I'm Florentine Barbie. I glued some leftover filigree to the wood base, then sandwiched everything between the embroidered pieces. 

Not pictured in this section are my four sets of earrings (because a girl needs options), two necklaces I made (again, options), my saccoccia/pockets, my garters, and my camicia. I also never got around to making a colletto/partlet, because I ran out of time and haven't bothered with it, since.

End Result

Photo courtesy of Kenny Jewel. You can book this talented man through his Facebook page.

Overall, I'm pleased with how it looks. I'm still not happy with the fit issues, but I don't care enough to go back and fix them. And I've learned some awesome tricks to get around the bleeding trim issue when cleaning this thing. And the taffeta has calmed down enough that I no longer look like Scarlett O'Hara. Once I get around to making another dress, I'll likely still wear this one, on occassion. You know, the options thing.

How to Make Your Own Cross Stitch Pattern

I said I'd do an update on Sforza and Gaddi, but well, this isn't it.

If you're like me, you've found that you're unsatisfied with following the readymade cross stitch patterns on the market. You might, like me, long to create your own pieces. And, like me, you probably don't want to spend money on software to do it for you. I'm poor folk, and I can't afford a fancy schmancy computer program - Adobe already emptied my pockets.

Doing it by hand is easier than you might think. First and foremost, decide on what you want to embroider. If you have a photo or printout, you're about halfway there. If you're like me and can't find a big enough jpeg to print, you do it by hand on tracing paper.

Next step is to get ahold of some 1/16" graph paper. I can't afford to buy a pad, so my awesome boyfriend printed a few sheets for me. Slap your original image onto a light table, and tape it well while you're down there. Next, tape your (makeshift) graph paper on top of the image/drawing. If you, again, are like me and can't afford a light table, you can flip a clear plastic bin over and stick a bright light under it. Cheap and effective.

The next bit is coloring your graph paper square by square. This part is a bit of a painstaking process. Fortunately, after years of "dolling" I'm used to drawing one pixel at a time, so this part isn't so bad. Here's a snippet of what I've got so far. I'll be slowly working on this over the next few/several weeks/months, in between paying stuff. Here's hoping I don't forget about it in the meantime.

Evolution of a Corset

This entry is going to be somewhat image-heavy, mostly because I don't have a lot to say about the project. The sky blue corset I've been working on is nearing completion - all that's left at this point is adding grommets. But since that's the only thing left, I'm going ahead and creating an entry as if it were done. Because I can.

Here is a picture from after I had assembled all the fabric bits and threw it on my form. I like putting things on dress forms often, because I like checking and making sure everything is about where I want it. Plus, it's just plain satisfying.

Aaaand, here's a shot of it, as I was adding boning and channels.

Exciting, right? Maybe only for me. Next is one of the bias binding, and a closeup of some of the flossing.

Flossing was originally added to help keep bones in their channels, thus avoiding issues of them popping through stitching and/or the fabric, itself. The technique quickly evolved to become more than just functional, and there are some beautiful examples of flossing in period and modern corsetry. Mine isn't particularly beautiful or refined, and it doesn't take theform of flowers and the like, but I do enjoy it, nonetheless. Like embroidery, it's soothing to do and helps complete the overall look.

Nice effect, huh?

And lastly, the finished corset.

I'm very satisfied with the finished product. This corset would look better on a body than my crappy form, but it definitely achieves the look I was going for: feminine, soft, pretty. 

What I learned from this project:

Not much, really, though I did enjoy working on it. I did learn that Ageless Patterns isn't much help, beyond just the basic pattern. If I ever need to make something I've never done, I won't buy a pattern from this company. The stitching on the corset isn't as perfectly symmetrical as I'd like, but it's still quite satisfactory. 

After I get the grommets in, this piece will be delivered to its new owner, and I'll be taking measurements to get her gown underway.

Up Next: Luigi Gaddi and Mario Sforza

Update on the Russian Court Dress

Back to work on the corset! I'm almost done, which is rather exciting. The bias binding is now sewn down, and I am currently working on flossing the thing. I'm planning on being done with the corset within the week, and moving on to the dress.

This weekend, I was also able to fit the giubonni for Mario Sforza and Luigi Gaddi, so there will be updates involving those, as soon as I get the muslins trued up and adjust my patterns. Exciting! For me, anyway.

In other unrelated news, I got engaged over the weekend! Yay, me! And my fiancé, of course. We're not getting hitched for a little while, as we have other ducks to queue up, first (even though I'm already planning things in my head). But Yay! I swore to myself years ago that I wouldn't become a wedding-obsessed-type. We'll see how well that pans out.

Non-Update, aka Revisiting Old Work

So, Halloween has just passed, which means that up until this week, I was busy working odd hours and fighting illness (every year, I get sick. It's tradition, now). But now the chaos of haunted events and the Playboy Mansion is over, and I have some fun stuff to report: The busk for the late Victorian/Edwardian corset arrived, which means I can finally get going on it, again. And while I was waiting on the busk, I got a doublet and sleeves drafted for Luigi Gaddi. Progress! That said, I don't have much else to post about, so I'm showing a veste I worked on last Winter/Spring.

The Chocolate Veste

This was the inspiration portrait. I have no idea who painted it. The woman who wanted it for Southern Faire was keen on keeping her original main color, which was a black/orange shot taffeta, which reads as brown. Because she was playing a Baronessa, we chose to trim her veste in a subdued gold that reads like gold with extra nickel in it. This was the second Italian dress I'd worked on, and the first noble costume. This costume had a number of challenges. First and foremost, the woman who commissioned it was planning on losing weight. A lot of weight. between her first corset fitting and the final veste, she lost somewhere between 4 and 6 inches in her waist. This was awesome for her, but quite challenging for me. Also, San Lorenzo, the guild we're in, has a history of trouble with collars on vesti. Women either had collar flop, or resorted to inserting boning. After trying two different collars on my toiles, I realized I could just make a built up collar that was an extension of the bodice.

Pretty satisfying. So far, this is just one layer each of taffeta and cotton canvas, with two lines of trim to cover the shoulder seam. So, first hurdle was complete. Next up, the dreaded baragoni. The portrait had four rows of loops, so I attempted to do what I could to achieve the same look.

My baragoni are definitely bigger. But, in this case, I was okay with that. The woman who commissioned this veste has a broader ribcage and hips than the little young thing in the portrait, and the larger baragoni really help to show off her ever-diminishing waist. I ended up started with a short sleeve as the base for the baragoni, before tacking down strips of taffeta and trim. It was a simple solution, and a pretty effective one, if I may say so. I have no clue if this is the way it was done during this period, but it was the most straightforward method I could come up with.

And this was the veste, once I attached the skirts, which were padded and pleated in the usual way. See how tiny that waist looks, between the baragoni and the skirts? And I swear this dress isn't as shiny in person; the flourescent lights in the shop are reeeeaaaally making it look funny.

What I Would Do Differently

What did I take away from this project? Overall, I like it. The veste looks like a chocolate box, which pleases me. However, next time, I will do my damnedest to convince the next person that they should really be wearing two layers (a sottana AND a veste), as it never looks right otherwise and creates extra issues that have to be solved in a theatrical manner, instead of maintaining a better level of period accuracy (like adding a zipper to keep the skirts from gapping in front). I would love to never ever put another zipper into a Renaissance costume. Ever. That said, you can't actually see the zipper, so it works from a theatrical standpoint. But everything would have been much more satisfying if I had made two whole garments.

Up Next...

The corset to go with the Russian Court dress, and some toiles for Mario Sforza and Luigi Gaddi.