We make an odd but stylish couple!

Also, I owe you a picture of the bustle itself:

Something about that dark teal is really hard to photograph.  But you get the idea.  It needs real boning, not the plastic bendy stuff.  It’s already getting droopy in this picture at home on the duct tape dummy.  Which doesn’t have legs for the back panel to brace against and be not-droopy, so it’s a combination of factors, but darn it’s cute.

It turned out way too big, and it needs something to make the front cuter.  It’s a work in progress.  Very comfortable to sit in.

On to the dreadhawk:

I made these myself from wool roving, a few strands of yarn, chinese wooden beads, brass coins, etc.  Up top is my tiny top hat mounted on a headband, which is not comfortable, but very secure.  Then come the shorter dread combs that I use for bangs.  Then two bunches, one larger one as a base, one smaller one as an accent on top.

Getting my hair prepped to install the falls was interesting.  I used B’s spiking spray to glue the twists and it did a wonderful job keeping everything in place.  Here’s a little montage:

And a detail of the makeup – copper and deep aqua.

I’d like to get some better photos in a photoshoot sort of situation.  It’s hard to capture the shinyness of the fabric when you can’t control the lighting!

It was a really fun Dragon*Con and I wish I’d been feeling better so I could have worn the costume a second night.  Next year I hope I won’t get sick the day before the con!

Here, Lindsey is doing her best Stella impression, “I like to sew with lethuh…”

I started The Pleat Strip From Hell, but messed it up and decided to call it a night. The next day, after spending the morning making buttonholes, I headed over to Heidi’s place for a sewing day, which was really low-key and fun. Lots of good advice and especially some good, aggressive egging-on from Kate. She pretty much shamed me out of my whinyness. I do get pretty whiny sometimes. If you’ve ever dealt with me in whiny-land, I hereby apologize and thank you for putting up with me.

Are you ready for the onslaught of pictures? Hold on to your butts! Here we go!

Yes! It’s a bustle! The color is really hard to photograph. The yellow bits are my boning channels. Kasper was interested in the ruffles. He knows I instinctively avoid them, but as I mentioned before, Kate was adamant, in a good way.

I learned a cool tip on making quick ruffles without any special equipment other than your sewing machine. Simply crank the top tension up to 11, set your stitch length as long as possible, and sew away. MAGIC!

I forgot to take a picture of the bustle finished (I was exhausted after sewing all day), but here are some pictures under the polonaise!

I love my mini bustle so much. I’m going to wear it just like that, with pants underneath. It’s really comfy and I’ll practice sitting in it next time I try it on.

Today, not only do you get to see the beautiful sleeves, but also a new angle on my bathroom! Isn’t it exciting? Here I am trying on the first sleeve over my tshirt to see how the crazy pleat works with my elbow. I was kind of disappointed by the mechanism of the sleeve pleat. The raw edges stay on the outside and that’s where you put bows or trim to camouflage the fraying. Grr. I pinked them as best I could and whip stitched the edge so that the fabric wouldn’t get any ideas that I was encouraging this kind of behavior.

Here we are with the sleeves set in:

This is after I modified the shoulder to come in a full inch. I am really not one for the drop-shoulder look, so I feel a bit better about this. I suppose if I was really insane, the sleeve should come up to where the shoulder dart hits. For now, I’m going to let it slide though. This may be due to the Incredible Shrinking Girl side effects of measuring my back width over a month ago and fitting now. I’m not upset, it’s a great problem to have.

I haven’t sewed in the ties to bustle the skirt up yet, but I really like how the front points look already:

What does the back look like, you ask? I’m glad you said something!

I added metal trim items! I got the almost-circle thingies at Skycraft in Orlando, and the winged scarab piece is something I ordered for last year’s costume off of Ebay. I’m also going to add the patterned gold ribbon to set off the basque tabs from the rest of the dress.

The list of Things Left To Do is getting pretty small!

• Boning in bodice seams
• Stitch-witchery-down the front facings
• Gold ribbon trim
• Hem back
• Bustle ties
• Buttons
• Cover sleeve pleats

This weekend was a busy one, and I just couldn’t get into the groove. I’m not in hysterics over the trim, but I’m also not wearing the corset. I’m taking B’s advice and running headlong at the problem in the spirit of punk rock. I settled on one patterned ribbon, one solid ribbon, and probably some self-fabric pleated lengths.

But I got more work done on my matching hair!

Hoarding shiny things is turning out well for me at this point. I attached all sorts of things to the wool dreads. Brass coins, copper and gold beads, bone beads carved to look like skulls, jinglies. I also braided up some soft chenille yarn. I think I’m going to use the fabric scraps to make a head wrap to hide my roots when I put the hair in.

Last week I did some research on Victorian hairstyles, and there are definitely some things that are dread-able. I’ll probably try to coil some high up at the crown and then have some hanging down below.

Fitting was interesting because the side seams aren’t sewn until after trim is applied, which makes sense. But there was a tiny bit of hysterics because I just wasn’t sure I had pinned the sides properly and I ended up with a lot more room than when I fitted the mockup.

Hysterics mostly happen when I’m laced up. Go figure. Once I had the corset off, reason again became possible and B’s suggestion that I run with it and simply put the buttons wherever they’ll close best was deemed to be the best way to handle it. With the seam allowance, the off-centeredness isn’t terribly obvious, and the pattern does say that adjustments can be made at the center front. I would hate to cut it down and regret that, so this strategy will be good.

You can see in the pictures, it just wants a dart at the shoulder. I think it elongates that nice diagonal line that the waist darts have, so it’s a good modification.

One last picture before I go. The pretty back!

It’ll look even better when I have the bustle situation worked out.

I’m really, really proud of myself.

I’ve gotten tons more done since last I blogged. Finished flatlining…

…and moved on to assembling the back piece. Lots of hand-basting, which I actually really enjoy. Especially since I got some new basting needles which are long and sharp.

Once the side pleats are basted, the top gets pleated onto a piece of twill tape.

Then you sew it to the back pieces. The above picture is actually just the pleating, not the attaching, and it’s kind of a mess now with all the stitching, but it’ll be pretty strong. The trick is to attach it only to the interlining, not the outer fashion fabric. Tricky indeed.

Here’s how it looks after I sewed the back pieces together:

Makes a lovely chair cover!

I sewed up the new darts, being an expert at this point at darts. The new ones between bust and shoulder are nearly perfect and I am so much happier with the fit. The original bust-waist-hip darts ended up a tad smaller than I wanted, but A.) that’s OK because I had to guess a little on them and try to flow the new width back into the same vertical points and B.) I’ve lost some weight between now and when I started, so a “perfect” fit will never be achieved, but I’ve gotten damned close.

On to 1.0! The copper fabric is beautiful, but it curls and shreds like a bitch. This realization may have been the point at which I made the decision that if a well-made, on-sale formal gown were to dangle itself tantalizingly in front of my face, that I would indeed buy it to save myself from having to do this a third time. Ann Taylor had a sale. The gods were listening! I picked up a nice cocktail length medium sky blue dress with beautiful details for about $100, which is probably how much I would have paid for materials for a third polonaise. So I am concentrating on headwear and warm clothes for the November wedding now. Whew!

For this problem, I have the solution. Eventually. I’m not cutting out the pieces with the pinking shears because I think it would add to the complexity of the sewing, and I am definitely in keep-it-simple mode. I think it’ll be a good seam finish though.

Again, my trusty team of pattern weights are on parade.

No, as a matter of fact, there isn’t anything left in the cupboards. Thank you for asking.

See? I know how to mark darts now! The fabric really is pretty.

The saving grace for the fabric will be the interlining that gets sewn to each piece before I sew them together. I’m just going to use some tightly woven cotton, or that bedsheet I saved but who knows where. A lot of sewing with bedsheets is going on at the Truly Victorian forums. I love reading the posts there.

So, I expect there’ll be a lot more cutting tonight with the cotton interlining, and hopefully some flatlining (Sewing the copper to the cotton. Not having heart attacks. Knock on wood.). I swear two thirds of sewing is cutting and ironing. They should really tell you that when you first start.

Darts! I marked them very carefully (while watching The Corpse Bride, fun movie to sew along with) and then sewed them veeerrrrrrryyyy sllllooooowwwwlllyyyy. Started toward the middle and continued out toward the point, then broke the thread and went back from the middle in the other direction, as I learned from The YouTube Videos. This intarwebs thing is pretty cool!

So then I tried it on, first just over my shirt, then over my corset+shirt:

You can totally see the difference. Kate was absolutely right and I never questioned her, but I was very curious to see the difference for myself. The corset kind of turns that part of you into a dressform and you don’t need ease there. I sat down in it and nothing changed. Verrry interesting.

There’s even a bit of extra room! You can see I’m quite pleased with myself. I’m probably going to turn the neckline just like that for a simple lapel look.

One of the big problems is the extra fabric above the bust. As B put it, I do not have a “shelf” even wearing the corset. Here’s the solution I finally came up with when we got it all pinned for the actual fitting:

I extended the frontmost darts all the way up and over the bust to take in the extra bulk between bust and shoulder. The instructions call for dart adjustments to be made equally from the same point on all 4 darts, but there was nothing to help with the extra bulk up top. It’s still overing above my chest, but I can’t get it to lay flat and it looks kind of dramatic, which is always a plus.

ETA: I just realized that we pinned the front closed improperly – it should be 1″ stitching line against 1″ stitching line, rather than against the edge. Because of the buttons. So back to the fitting process I shall go next time around. This is all good stuff to mess up in the mockup phase, before I go nuts and shred the nice fabric. Speaking of which…

And one more before I go. Just a little teaser pic of the fabric and trim for version 1.0.

So, I patched the dart holes, re-sewed them, and just for fun, tried it on without my corset.

Yeah, one of the patched darts pulled out, so it wasn’t going to be much of a fitting. I could pull it shut, but they call for a one-inch seam allowance to allow for button overlap. That just wasn’t happening.

But do notice how nicely it fits across the back! It’s very much like the two cassocks I sewed for B, except for these effing weird front darts. One of the pitfalls of historical costuming.

So, OK. Lessons learned:

1. I don’t know how to handle a dart, CLEARLY.
2. I should try it on over my corset.

So I laced up ye olde corset, exactly the same as when we took measurements, and LO! It fit even worse. It pushed my front up a bit, but added extra bulk in the small of my back. I can comfortably slide a finger between my back and the laces. I still haven’t decided what to do about that, because…

I realized that I had used the wrong seam allowance. I can’t believe I’m blogging this because it is such a rookie mistake, but in the interest of journalistic integrity, I will. With approx 10 seams sewn at 5/8 instead of 1/2, I estimate that by re-sewing all the seams I regained an inch or two.

Having fixed that problem, I went straight to YouTube and found all the videos on sewing darts (with a few DIY dart gun videos thrown in, interesting) and learned some tips on getting darts right. Also determined that these darts are not normal and I should not feel TOO bad.

Then I re-cut the front pieces to re-do the darts. I’ll post about that tomorrow, because it was a bit more successful, the darts look much smaller and more precise, but I haven’t yet tried it on over my corset. Which I finally found this morning, neatly rolled up and placed in a laundry basket. Why? Maybe because I was tired and it was near the bed. Lack of oxygen can really do some weird stuff to you.

Stay tuned for 0.2, now with added corset!

• I have a bit of a longer torso than the Laughing Moon underbust corset pattern predicted. I’ll add an inch around the bottom of it to get the waist up into the right spot and still get a tiny bit of hip coverage.
• I sew pretty fast!
• I am not the only anal-retentive sewing-person in the world. There is something so satisfying about ironing each seam flat.
• There is still lots for me to learn.
• I need a dress form.

So I’ve got a nice little mockup and a point to get to before the next Corset Day. I will have my actual outside fabric cut, lengthened, and sewn together. I think my pattern also calls for flat lining – sewing lining and fabric pieces together prior to construction. Not to be confused with flatlining!

I enjoyed it so much. It reminded me a lot of the costume classes in college, or even the concentrated camaraderie of my studio drawing classes. Everyone’s got their own project, we joke back and forth, time seems to go more slowly. It’s one of the few situations when I’ve been able to completely give myself over to the moment.

Polonaise

I think I was still high from Corset Day when I started on the Polonaise mockup-mockup. Yes, I caved. The pattern insists that you make a mockup of the bodice of the piece, and I did. Thank goodness. You’ll see why.

First, I nearly suffocated under the weight of all those (real paper!) pattern pieces. They have you cut out different sized fronts and backs, depending on your measurements, which I thought was really brilliant.

Then I got out my Good Sewing Scissors (shining like justice!), used my trusty pattern weights to keep the pieces in place (sun dried tomatoes and salt, delish.) and proceeded to cut out the pattern pieces. AND THE DARTS.

Ugh. That was dumb, and I knew in the back of my head I was doin’ it wrong. I sewed it up anyway, to get the gist and learn from my mistake, etc.

Not bad! I’ll probably unpick the darts, patch them a bit, and resew them fairly close to the cuts. Or I might just recut those pieces, and end them just below the hip. You can’t see them here, but the fronts go below knee level and I just can’t justify wasting that much fabric.

I may finish off this mockup one day, the fabric’s color is kind of meh, but I could dye it, and I love the lacy flowers.

Next week: repair/recut the front pieces, fit the darts, cut out the copper fashion fabric for the Steampunk mockup. Maybe even sew it up!

I also need to make some trim decisions. I’m thinking just ribbon on the edges and maybe another farther away from the edges. I’ll probably try my hand at knife pleats using the cool Truly Victorian fork method (video).