Halfway There

I'd hoped to be done with the new corset tonight, but given the rather small amount of time I've had to work on it I'd say I'm lucky to have gotten as far as I have. 

I've got the main assembly finished, and I've got about half of the boning channels stitched.  I still have to sew the rest of the boning channels, cut/tip/insert the boning, apply the binding, set the grommets and add some lace at the top.  Eventually I'll do some flossing, but something tells me that with a little more than a week 'till final dress and no actual dress started yet, flossing is the last thing on the to be done list!

Fine Coutil and New Corset

I am still finishing up the details on my repro drawers pattern and instructions, but in the meantime I've fallen head over heels into the Oh Crap Dickens is Around the Corner and I Haven't Finished Anything Yet freakout.  One of the things on this years list of to-dos is a new corset, so that's what I'm up to tonight.  I spent an hour at work using the laser to cut out all the pieces, and now it's time to get sewin'!

Fun/pretty cotton fabric for lining is mandatory in my sewing room!

I'm using a BEAUTIFUL pale blue German coutil from Farthingales.  It's so light and thin, but incredibly dense and strong at the same time.  The herringbone pattern is the finest I've ever seen! 

Dime included for scale.  Look how tiny the herringbone weave is!!!

I can't wait to see how this stuff handles.  With luck, I'll be done by tomorrow night and able to start breaking it in at workshops this weekend.

Make Your Own Custom Hoop With Me!

Need a hoop skirt for Dickens Faire, Halloween, reenactments or just because?  Can't find one with the proper shape?  Want to make your own hoop skirt but too nervous to try it on your own?  Come make one with me!

I'm teaching a Make Your Own Custom Hoop Skirt workshop at TechShop Menlo Park on Saturday, October 20th at 10:00am.  I'll walk you through the whole process of drafting a pair of hoops that are shaped and sized exactly as you desire, then help you turn your paper pattern into fabric and steel reality.  By 5:00pm you'll swish out the door in your very own custom drafted and sewn hoops!

The nitty gritty details-

• You don't have to have passed the usual TechShop safety courses to take this class, but you do need to know how to turn on a sewing machine and sew a straight line. (Pretty sure everyone reading this can do that!)
• We will provide all the tools and materials you'll need, including sewing machines, steel hoopwire, fabric (it'll be white), etc.  All you need to bring is your own lunch, or I you prefer I can point you to some good grub nearby.
• The actual class will be 6 hours long, but there's a one hour break so you can go get lunch, so the grand total shows as 7 hours.
• We'll be making round style hoops.  You can customize the width, length and shape (cone shaped, U-shaped, funky wobbly shaped, etc) but this method will not work for bustles, panniers or elliptical hoops.  
• We need a minimum of 3 students to go ahead with the class, so don't wait, sign up now! 

My fabulously drawn example of some of the styles of hoops you could make.  

I have a hankering to make that third pair!

 

 

I'm so excited to teach this class and I hope to see you there!  Much love to anyone who wants to boost the signal by telling your friends or linking to this post :)

The Much Belated Dickens Dress Post

Silly me!  I bought some fabric for this years Dickens Faire dress last week and thought about showing it to you today, but then I realized I never showed you the finished dress from last year!

I'd say it ended up fairly close to the original design plan.  Due to a time crunch (I finished this the night before the last day of costume approval!) I ended up using a simpler design for the sleeves and not trimming them.  As dresses go it's quite plain, but given that I was going for middle class I think it's just fine.

The main fabric is a lightweight herringbone brown wool with light blue and white stripes.  I used a blue plaid wool fabric cut on the bias to trim the skirt.  The skirt is simply three rectangles of fabric sewn together, lined with cotton and cartridge pleated to a waistband.  It ended up a bit shorter than I originally planned, but I like my dance skirts on the shorter side anyways.

The bodice is a heavily altered version of TV443.  I shortened it, got rid of the double points in front and put in totally different sleeves.  The seams are all piped with the blue wool fabric.  The undersleeves are cotton and simply pinned in so that they can be easily removed for washing.  Since this dress was going to see some heavy action I chose to sew the bodice to the skirt to avoid any threat of gaposis.  

The bodice is flatlined with cotton organdy.  Some choose a lightweight canvas for this purpose, but I found that the thin crisp organdy gave great structure and support and was light and super breathable to boot.  I spent most of faire at Fezziwig's dancing my butt off, so having a light and breathable bodice was important!   Oddly enough, I didn't bone the bodice at all.  I think I simply ran out of time.  During dress rehearsal I was quite surprised to find that you couldn't tell it didn't have boning!  While it looks wrinkly on the mannequin, it lay pretty smoothly on my body, even while moving.  I will be adding boning in before it gets worn again however, since it will still improve the overall appearance.

The back of the bodice didn't look nearly as good as the front.  I had a terrible wrinkle issue there, but it appears to be because the back and sides are about three quarters of an inch too long.  Pinching excess fabric out makes it lie perfectly, so at some point I'll have to disassemble the pieces and shorten them.  Boning would certainly have helped, but there would still be too much fabric back there with no where to go.

I picked up a beautiful collar from a seller at the Dickens workshops.  I've tacked it down so that it can easily be removed for washing.

The whole ensemble is worn over the bell-shaped hoops I made using my custom hoop drafting instructions.  They've got a circumference of 95", so they're the perfect size for Faire.

I used Truly Victorian's free hoop petticoat instructions to make a petticoat out of cotton organdy.  It looks a little worse for wear here, but that's because it's been through a season of Faire and is in need of a good washing!

I don't seem to have any good photos of me actually wearing the dress, which means this grainy iPhone image is the best you get for now.  No idea why my petticoat suddenly decided it wanted attention, but there it is peeking out!

Bonus photo: Ty can't go go Faire, but that doesn't mean he can't play along at home!

And So it Begins...

The fabric for my Dickens dress is finally here!!!  It took its sweet time meandering across the country, pausing halfway for nearly a week in some Midwest warehouse and convincing me it had been lost en route.  But it's here, and I can finally start sewing my day dress immedia... next week.  Sigh.  That whole "responsibility" thing compels me put aside what I want to do and focus on some other stuff for the next few days.  But here's a sneak peek at the plan...

 Click to embiggen 

It's changed a wee bit since I initially drew this up, but the basic silhouette and description are the same.  The main dress fabric is a brown wool with thin stripes of blue and white, and I'll be adding three thick bands of flat trim made from a pretty blue plaid wool at the hem, with skinnier bands of flat trim to decorate the pagoda sleeves.  The piping in the bodice will also be made from the blue plaid for a bit of contrast.

The bottom left of the image seems to show the fabric closest to its true color

I can't wait to get started!