Sky Blue Gown, Complete!

It is finished.

The sky blue "quarter back" gown I started, oh, half a year ago or more.  It's done.

Kind of.

Not really.

But it's wearable, and I wore it last weekend.

As usual I did a crap job taking photos at the event, so this is one taken by a pro whose work is super-fun to browse--for more photos of the event, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Philosophic-Photography/126087010764093

There are problems--for one, lesson learned.  Do not attempt to drape a new gown on a pregnant or immediately post-partum body.  It does not work.  You think you can estimate fit by just subtracting the giant basketball on your front, but you can't.  The back is a touch too narrow, the shoulders ended up too snug (though part of this is just 1780-authentic--your shoulders ought to feel a little "pulled back"), and sweet day in the morning, the arms are tight.  This may be partially due to the Baby Hauling Workout, in which one hauls a baby around and develops ridiculous biceps.

The front is a touch long, so wrinkles in an unflattering way at the bottom.  The gown is also too long for my taste.  (In the pic above, it's both tied up with tapes and rucked through my pocket slits.  Which actually looks quite fetching, but really, it's easier if I can just tie it up with tapes.)

However, what I was obsessed with on this style was the gorgeous lines of the back in the original (from Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion) and that came through.  I even got compliments from People in the Know about the back of the gown--so I consider it, overall, a success!

I finished the front edges by hand in the car on the way to our event last weekend, and confirmation--my favorite part about making this gown was the handsewing.  It really is possible to handsew a garment that is just as sturdy as machine-sewn (if not more so!) and doesn't take forever.

Now what?

Well, unfortunately, the fit issues are not easy ones to solve.  I think I'll raise the bottom of the front edge a touch to fix the iffy look there, but aside from that, we're really talking about constructing an entirely new bodice.  Which I'll do some day...on another gown.  I'll just have a slightly snug gown in the meantime.  I'm also going to re-do the hem, by hand (it was machine sewn the first time around for speed's sake, but now that I know where I want the skirt to hit, I'll hand-sew it).

I have enough fabric for a matching petticoat, which I think I will do, and because the gown looked heavenly with the cotton voile kerchief (aka couple yards of fabric from my stash) I wore with it, I'm going to make sleeve ruffles and finish a handkerchief to pair with it.  Sky blue and floaty white cotton just screams summer.  No, actually, it whispers it.  But loudly enough to hear, quite clearly.

Baby Dress from Reworked Petticoat

Eleanor in block print.  That's all I've got for you at the moment:

But give me two minutes without a teething baby, and a revision nagging me, and all that jazz, and I'll show you how I turned a handmedown child's petticoat into her dress.

What I'm Sewing Now: March Edition

1) Still working on the Sky Blue Gown--it's mostly handsewn in little bursts while watching random documentaries on Netflix with the Husband.  Which is my excuse for being in-cred-ib-ly slow on this project. I still need to fix a wonky skirt issue and finish the front of the gown, but it's done aside from that!  Full post with photos when I finish.  Which will be soon (that promise was for my benefit more than anything else!).

2) Easter dress!  I'm attacking this adorable 1940 pattern from EvaDress:

in a robin's egg blue herringbone that is unfortunately polyester (my least favorite fabric to work with, le sigh), but is surprisingly ok so far in terms of not being a rude synthetic fabric jerk.  So far the bodice and skirt and yoke are constructed, still need to do some finish work on each, assemble the pieces, and add the sleeves.

Wearing the Paprika Dress

Just a quick post to show the 1930s dress in action!  I got to wear the spicy-colored dress shortly after finishing it to a friend's 1930s themed birthday party (1930s for her 30th--brilliant idea!)

Accessorized with: Red t-strap shoes that approximate vintage (though not quite...I'd love to get a more suitable pair!)

Gold leaf-motif headband

Pearl earrings--in looking at 30s era photos and movies, simple studs seemed to be used fairly often

Red lipstick (that wore off after a couple cocktails and was never reapplied)

It was a family-friendly event, so E made the rounds before getting tucked into bed for the night.  Too bad I didn't have time for a 1930s accurate dress for her, too!

We rounded out a lovely evening with some casino-style action.  Though none of us really knew how to play roulette, we had authentic cocktails by our masterful bartender.

Next up--I plan to make a 1940s Easter dress.  I seem to do better when I have a specific goal or event in mind--do you find that you tend to make clothes or work on projects for a specific event or deadline, or do you create whatever strikes your fancy?

Sky Blue 1770s Gown: The Bodice

I finished making up the bodice of my new 18th century gown, and I feel I must gush a bit.  Not over anything I did particularly well, but over the Incredibly Wonderful Slipstitch found on the stitchery blog (now sadly--though not so sadly given the circumstances--in archive only) Stay-ing Alive.  Abby demonstrated a sweet slipstitch that joins lining and fashion fabric in one fell swoop, is documented to the 18th century, and produces just an eensy ridge on the interior of the garment.  (More on the nitty gritty how-to with fab tutorial here: http://stay-ingalive.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-do-weird-running-whip-stitch.html)

You guys.  This stitch is so much fun.

For one, thought I love handsewing, my time is pretty limited nowadays, and I don't have the luxury of spending hours and hours on a single project (well, I do, but only if I want one gown to take months to make).  This means one row of stitches instead of about seven, saving me time while I indulge my handsewing itch.

Exterior shot (it looks incredibly funky laid flat, but I swear it looks normal on stays on my dressmaker's dummy):

And the interior, where you can see the fun lines of stitching:

The skirt is cut and assembled, but not yet hemmed...I dislike hemming.  I may cheat and machine sew the skirt hems, because...well, sometimes a funky slipstitch can save you time and sometimes trusty old Edith, my sewing machine, is a better bet.  I've completed the arms and am planning to set them this week--whee!  And then skirt hemming and joining, finishing and trimming...so much more to do!

I Have Toilet Phones

So, I have toilet phones.  We live in a house built in the 1870s, renovated and expanded in the 1890s, and installed with toilet phones c1985.

Our lovely house:

A less than lovely toilet phone:

(Yes, the toilet roll is out.  It's perpetually out.  Because I'm too inept to be able to figure out how to work the roll holder.
Phase II of Bathroom Overhaul: Easy to use toilet roll holder.)

I'm not sure why we have toilet phones--why someone sat down (presumably on the jon) one day and thought, "You know what our beautiful historic house needs?  Phones in the loo."

The strange thing is, we have exactly three phones on the property.  Two are in bathrooms.  The third is in the garage.  Did these people never make a phone call in a normal location?

Regardless. Despite the fact that I love the evolution of our house, how I can see when different historic styles of architecture and design had their moments in the house and stuck around, the toilet phone epoch is one I'm not terribly attached to.  I'm not terribly attached to much of anything about the bathroom decor, to be honest.  Case in point below.  But while the overhaul will need to wait, getting rid of the toilet phones doesn't need to.

So that's my home-renovation goal for the weekend--unscrew the toilet phones from the wall.

More adventures in This Bizarre Old House to come.

Spicy 1930s Dress

What: The Paprika Dress!  Made of warm, spicy deep orange polyester crepe and satin, from a pattern from Eva Dress Patterns:

The main body of the dress is crepe, while the scarf tie, belt, skirt flounce, and flutter sleeves (more on that below) are satin.  A mix of both Views A and B.  Closes with snaps along the side.

Le dress:

When: This dress made up pretty quickly--all the work has been done in the past week.  I cut out the pattern one evening, and did most of the sewing save some prep and finish work in one day, off and on.

Where: The dress was made at home, on my trusty little sewing machine, and debuts next weekend.

Why: I love the 1930s, but haven't had much of an excuse to create an outfit.  A friend is having a 30s themed party for her 30th birthday, and it seemed like the reason I've been waiting for to dive into a new decade!

How: I loved working with this pattern--it was easy to follow and make up, and the pieces are deceptively basic.  I could see myself making a dozen different iterations of this dress just by tweaking the details.  (For the sake of my sewing budget and my closet, I'll try to refrain, but--wouldn't a black suiting-weight wool with  white chiffon sleeves and scarf tie be just scrumptious?)

One word of caution--the pattern's directions are the originals, and vintage patterns tend to go light on the instructions.  If you're used to modern patterns' pages of directions, expect a much less guided experience making this.  That said--it's very simple.  And sometimes figuring things out for one's self is much more fun!

A few notes on my stitching experience and what I changed from the original pattern:

I decided to mix the views and do the scarf tie as seen on View A above, but the belt as seen on View B.  And then I decided to incorporate the satin in the skirt flounce as well.  I really loved how that detail turned out:

Then came the sleeves.  I made them up and everything, even screwing one seam up, ripping it out, and redoing it:

And then I tried on the dress and thought...how cute would this be with flutter sleeves?  Especially for a party?  And then I glanced at the pile of satin scraps and found two Cheshire-cat-smile shaped bits perfect to use as sleeves.  This departure is one of my favorite details of the finished dress:

One thing I would do differently: I wasn't very judicious in selecting fabric--this project needed to go from pattern to done in just a couple weeks, no time for online fabric ordering, and my only nearby fabric stores are big-box types with iffy selection.  I'm mostly quite pleased (especially with the crepe and satin skirt!) but the satin bow is a bit stiff and doesn't look flowy and scrumptious the way the pattern does.  It makes a jaunty, Girl-Guides-esque knot, but I'd love a re-do of this design using silk charmeuse or another drapey fabric.