Gwendolyn and her sister are planning on going to Bristol Renaissance Faire this summer and they invited me. I have nothing appropriate to wear, and there's no way I'm going to get away with wearing shorts and a tee-shirt to a costuming event after all this. Therefore, I decided to make (another) Venetian dress. It's already inside my comfort zone and I already own the perfect fabric. I'll be using a red and gold silk brocade that I purchased for a ridiculously low price at Hobby Lobby on clearance.
My main source image will be this piece by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo:
While the original image has a split overskirt and a contrasting skirt underneath, I'm going to go ahead and make mine just a "round gown," to steal an 18th century term. I haven't got a suitable fabric for an underskirt and anyway, this dress is going to be constructed pretty much exclusively using theatrical cheats, so the less layers the better. Also, I'm spending a bit of time looking at this image. I'm intrigued by their partlets.
July 27, 2008
All right; I have almost exactly two weeks to complete this project. So far, I've got the bodice halfway constructed and am planning on spending today working on the skirt.
The bodice is two layers of cotton twill and one layer of the silk brocade, boned with cable ties. The twill layers were assembled with boning channels sewn in between, the silk was assembled separately, and the lining was installed by hand with a fell stitch like Holly's drop-front dress and the swallowtail jacket.
The skirt panels have been cut. Usually, for straight-panel skirts, I tear the fabric to make sure it's on-grain. The brocade doesn't tear, so I used the pull-the-thread method of finding the grain. Basically, you pull one thread out of the crossgrain and then cut along the little line it leaves you. I cut three panels, matching the pattern at the seams. It took a lot less time than I anticipated, since the back of the brocade is woven in such a fashion that the thread-pulling went really quickly and easily.
July 29, 2008
How to build a skirt:
- Come home from work at 6, promptly fall asleep until 12:45 the next morning.
- Get up, be completely disoriented, wander into the sewing room.
- Retrieve laptop, check email, livejournal, facebook, webcomics of choice.
- French seam two of the three skirt panels together.
- Get distracted by new purchase: fake hair for opulent Venetian hairstyle!
- Pin the other panel to the first two.
- Retrieve laptop, check email, livejournal, facebook, and webcomics of choice...just in case anything happened in the last hour.
- Be surprised that nothing has happened until you realize it's two a.m.
Anyway, the skirt's been assembled, though not sewn into a tube yet. The top is going to be cartridge pleated to the bodice, so it'll be easier to mark where the pleats go and to sew in the batting for the pleat padding while the skirt is still flat.
I also ordered some lace for the cuffs of this thing. It's being shipped USPS, so we'll see how long it takes to get here. The website estimated 8-12 business days, but honestly in my experience, USPS is faster than UPS ground, and cheaper to boot.
July 29, 2008
Slight problem: The bodice was too long, which means it dug in around the waist in a couple of places and kept trying to ride up under the arms. It was also quite painful. Therefore, I took a couple inches off the bodice at each side seam, altering the curve at the waist to fit. It's much more comfortable now.
The skirt has been marked and trimmed--the waist is contoured to fit with the curved bodice waistline. I then folded the edge down and pinned it to a doubled layer of cotton batting. A lot of the directions I've seen for cartridge pleating assume that you'll be lining the skirt; I've chosen to leave mine unlined. I did so last time and it was wonderfully light and comfortable to wear. Also, I don't have anything appropriate on hand with which to line it.
And then I realized it's half-past one in the morning and I have work in the morning. Tomorrow will be running the gathering stitches for the cartridge pleats, and possibly beginning to attach the skirt and bodice. Note to self: procure thimble and pliers in the meantime. I have no desire to repeat the whole tooth-chipping hand-debilitating experience of last time.
July 30, 2008
The skirt has been attached to the bodice. I marked the pleat spacing using my thumb as a benchmark and ran two gathering threads. I used heavy-duty button & carpet thread; with normal gathers, you can usually fake it if one of your gathering threads breaks. With cartridge pleating, not so much. And I'm really glad now that I decided on three panels for the skirt. No way would I have been able to cram four onto the bottom of the bodice.
Referring to my last entry, I procured neither a pair of pliers nor a thimble for this little escapade. Turns out, I didn't need them. I just whipstitched the skirt to the bodice with a doubled strand of the same button thread I used to gather it. I expected it to be more painful than it was, based on past experience.
I'm feeling pretty good about the project now, though. With the exception of the front seam of the skirt and a hem, this dress is now at the same stage my original Venetian was at by 5 a.m. the day it was to be worn. This dress won't see its debut for another week and two days. Score!
August 5, 2008
I am currently wearing a completed (or nearly so) chemise under the nearly completed dress. This is my second-and-a-half attempt at a chemise for this project, and it works just fine. The previous attempt, while quite humorous, simply didn't fit. The chemise itself is constructed wholly of rectangles, with square underarm gussets providing the necessary fit for the armscye. Mine were too small the first time around, resulting in a chemise that, while it went over my head, wouldn't let me put my arms down. I spent probably four hours on the 4th (my birthday, incidentally) french-seaming it, and then another hour or so ripping it apart because it simply wouldn't work. I then cut out larger underarm gussets and pinned them in to see if they would work, and they were too large. Then I did what I should have done in the first place and measured my previous chemise for the 2005 Venetian gown. I can't stand the feel of the silk habotai against my skin, but at least the thing fit me. Copying that, I cut out the third set of gussets (nine inches even, for future reference) and made the chemise this evening. I also said, "Screw it; I'm serging this beast," because I just refused to spend another four hours on french seams when nobody really cares if it's period or not.
August 6, 2008
I spent the evening messing around with sleeves. I used my "sleeve ver. 5,000,001" (drafted and entered into my pattern collection during a fit of frustration in 2006, as the name implies). It has one seam, running down the back. Of course, it was drafted for 18th century, so I had to make it from an elbow-length sleeve to a wrist-length one, but it wasn't too hard. The hard part was all the little slashes at the sleeve head. And by "all," I mean "all four." But they were fussy.
August 7, 2008
Both sleeves are complete and attached to the bodice. I went to Field's this evening and bought eight little antiqued-gold buttons to put at the attachment points of the sleeves and wound up anchoring each sleeve slash a) to itself and then b) to the bodice with the buttons. I'm probably going to take a couple stitches at the bottom of the armscye tomorrow, simply because the sleeves try to pull the shoulder straps off my shoulders, which feels annoying and looks icky. If they're anchored to the bodice elsewhere, it'll be easier to keep them on.
The lace at the cuffs is from M&J Trimming. It's not a reproduction lace or anything, but the lace in my main source image isn't very clear and this stuff looked pretty.
Also, much to my chagrin, the sleeves are bag-lined. There was no easier way to do the little slashes than to sew the things inside-out and then turn them. Having just installed the bodice lining by hand, there is no comparison. I hate bag lining and I love hand-installed linings. No question.
August 8, 2008
I've reached a major milestone in my costuming career. I finished the dress (sleeves attached, hemmed, ready to wear) the night before I had to wear it. I was not stitching trim on the morning of, nor was I sewing in the car on the way to the event. Score!
Now, granted, I finished at 11:45 p.m. and still had to build a hairpiece before Faire, so I was still up until 1:30 or so doing that but the dress itself was ready to go.
For the hairpiece, I bought several bags of fake hair. I lucked out; the color matched mine perfectly so I didn't have to worry about buying human hair and dyeing it to match. My method here was really high-tech. I chose a bowl from our dishes that fit the back of my head pretty well and used a spray bottle of water and masking tape to stretch a circle of buckram over the bottom of it. Once it dried, I peeled it off the bottom of the bowl, trimmed it down a bit, braided the large amounts of fake hair that had spent the last week or so lying around the kitchen, and sewed the braids to the buckram. This, of course, took longer to do than to describe, but it was fairly painless in the end. I just used a long needle and some brown button thread, and while the stitching on the inside isn't lovely, it's quite secure. I sewed a plastic hair comb to the inside for easy installation.
To wear it, I showered the night before and gelled my hair heavily. I rolled the front half to give it some texture, so that it wouldn't just lie flat against my head. The bangs, I twisted down and toward the back, ending just behind my ears. With a center part (or close to, taking into account the cowlick at my hairline), I started a low french braid on each side and pulled the braid across the back of my head as I was braiding it, so that the braids crossed at the center back of my head. I tucked the ends under, pinned them down, and then just sat the hairpiece on top of everything. I used a few heavy-duty bobby pins around the edge to secure it, et voila! Ten minute big, fancy hair. Next time I wear it, I'll probably spend some time putting pearls or something in the hairpiece, since it worked out so well this time.
In terms of accessories, I went fairly minimal this time. I used the pearl jewelry I used before and that was about it. I did go shopping and find a hugely long strand of pearls that I could have used as a last-minute girdle, but I decided against it. Reason? I really like how the cartridge pleats look at the waist and didn't want to slap a string of beads over it the first time out. That's a legitimate design decision, right? I was actually very happy with the simplicity of wearing the gown as I did; not having a fan or a goblet or anything like that meant I didn't have to worry about carrying a ton of objects while trying to look at merchandise and weave through crowds, which was nice.
Pearl necklace, earrings, and lace around the chemise neck.