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.

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.

The Beginnings of Mario Sforza and the Russian Court Dress.

The Russian court gown is coming along sloooowly. Most of this is because clothing from the Romanov era requires the proper underpinnings - specifically, a proper corset.

I started out with a pattern from Ageless Patterns. If you're curious to try using something from this company, you will need a good background in period clothing construction: There are NO instructions. If you have never made a corset before, I would recommend starting off with another company, like Laughing Moon Mercantile. Ageless Patterns is not for the faint of heart. 

 I found the size closest to the customer's waist measurement and proceeded to make a mockup. Now, here's the thing about Victorian corsetry: The more Rubenesque you are, the closer you will come to achieving that lovely wasp-waisted figure that was so popular during the turn of the century. The customer who commissioned this costume is willowy enough that the extremely pinched look can't happen without adding so much padding that it would look unnatural. So, some sort of happy medium will need to be achieved.

I ended up removing the bust gores and two of the hip gores, to achieve a better fit. Also, the dress form is doing a horrible job at filling out the garment, as per usual. So far, the body of the corset is together, and I'm waiting on a busk to come in the mail, before I can continue working on this piece.

In the meantime, I have begun drafting patterns for the Mario Sforza costume. I have the doublet done, and am hoping to complete his slops and sleeves while I await the arrival of the busk. I have no pictures to prove any of this, though, so you'll just have to believe me. Or not.

To make up for lack of photographic documentation, here's a picture of Zita, hiding in my sleeve:

Upcoming Projects

I've got a number of commissions/projects coming up, but since most of them are in the planning stages, I don't have much to write about just yet. But I CAN share images of the inspiration/basis for what I'll be working on.

The boyfriend is in dire need of a new suit, and wants a copy of the burial clothes of Don Garzia de' Medici, which resides in the costume collection at the Pitti Palace, in Florence. I've set him to work on all the gold couching, so this costume is waiting until he's done. In my version, his calze will have 26 panes in total. I believe he has 11 done, so far.

My current project is a Russian Court Gown. This isn't actually the image we're using for reference, but I honestly just couldn't remember where to locate the other one on the interwebz. Right now, the corset is in the middle of construction, and we're waiting on a busk and boning. More on this in future entries (possibly).

Also on the list of to-dos is this portrait, by Sofonisba Anguissola. It will be made for a teenager portraying one of the Medici Boys (Giovanni) at Southern Faire. In all likelihood, this one will be done before the Garzia.

Other costumes in the works include clothing for a retired captain of the Bande Nere, Mario Sforza, a Florentine physician, and a new dress for me. However, I do not have any photo references for these, yet. Stay tuned for more adventures in costuming!

New Side Project

In between a few different commissions, working on a number of dance costumes, and the Halloween season (sideshow gigs), I've decided to start a new side project. I got re-addicted to cross stitch, and am in the planning stages of developing a new pattern: Francesco de' Medici's coat of arms. If all goes according to plan (read: I don't hate the project before I finish it), this will be displayed in either San Lorenzo's guild yard or safely at home. So far, I've got a black and white copy that I've filled in with color, to get an idea of what I want to do.

I was undecided whether or not the figures (seraphim?) should have blue or green tunics, and gold or burgundy tassels hanging from the Maltese crosses. After coloring everything, I think I'll be going with the light green tunics to tie in with the garlands, and the burgundy tassels, to add weight to the bottom.

Since the original image gets pixelated at even the size of a quarter page, I went ahead and freehanded an approximation of the original image.

It's not perfect, but it's close enough for cross stitch. Also: Yay, tracing paper for creating symmetry!

The image, so far, is roughly 14"x14". The next step will be to get the drawing on a light table, under some graph paper, and fill out the 1/16" squares with color. It's a tedious way to map out a cross stitch pattern, but I don't have a program that will do it for me, and this method will give me the results I want. I also don't have a light table, which means I'll be improvising with a glass-top table that's been sitting in my mom's barn. Necessity is the mother of invention, right?