That Thing About Life and Lemons...

All the pleated pieces awaiting final assembly

The wet pleating process is awesome.  The skirt & sleeves dried exactly perfect.  They’re crispy & they change color in light like the original designer described the real dress.  My original bodice was awful. Patterning for smocking is very different from patterning to get a tailored fit, so the yoke looked stupid & broke up the line of the dress.  I fussed with the original pieces & it looked horrible no matter what I did to it, so I revised the design, got out some draping fabric & spent a couple hours draping & basting on myself in a mirror trying to get the fit & look I needed.  Draping is something you do on someone else or on a dressform that matches the measurements & shape exactly, so doing it on yourself is difficult & frustrating. It takes a certain level of skill & a special level of crazy.  I finally got what I wanted, cut it out, made it up in the real fabric, wet it & pleated it.

While it was drying I started working with the wig & headpiece.  After trying to force the whole thing to sit properly on my head with all the extra weight of my own hair, I realized there was no way with the tight fit of the dress I would be able to dress myself.  I can’t even hope to get the wig on myself once I’m in in the dress (it’s nearly impossible NOT in the dress). Also, I can’t drive in the wig assembly so I’d have to get dressed and have my hair fixed after I got to work.  There’s no way I’ll be able to wear it at work tomorrow.  I need a dresser with mad wig skilz and at least an hour of help to get me into my clothes.  So at 3PM I did a hard stop.  How do you blog crushing disappointment?   There is no way I can make this work alone, even though I had enough time to finish the dress.  Sometimes, life just sucks that way.  I’ve put a little over 8 hours into the dress. It needs ~3 more to finish. But not tonight. Tonight I just need to rage at the universe for tasks that take 2 people.

Peacock Dress at Last!

Some wins & some fails but definite progress. I got all of the dress cutting done just in time to leave for an event, because it took me a while to think through the patterning & experiment with the smocking machine. The smocking did not go well.  I tried multiple times to smock fabric for the cuffs but every time I got to about the halfway point a needle would slip & they whole piece would go wonky.  The taffeta is not forgiving; one try & it goes to trash because there are holes from the needles & pinch marks from the feed gears. It takes time to rethread all those needles.  I have plenty of fabric but I don’t have time to fuss with it.  I cut out the whole dress as if I wasn’t going to smock anything & if I have time tomorrow I can try again & substitute the bits if they work.

Smocking the cuffs

Sleeve pleats drying

I bet you’ve never seen anyone pleat a dress this way. The taffeta has some sizing in it, so it’s holding the pleats nicely.  I wasn’t sure how it would look but the swatch test came out well.  I put a plastic dropcloth over the dressform wearing the hoops.  The skirt was mostly assembled, then soaked in cold water & wrung out carefully so that there are lots of vertical wrinkles.  It's draped over the hoops dripping out in the garage. Voila! Fortuny pleating. I won’t know what it really looks like until it dries overnight. The sleeves are also pleated & laid out flat to dry. Now it’s nearly midnight & I have one more day to pull this project together.

Amidala's Coat, Part 3 & Done

Hello Saturday 😊

The coat is finished and the deadline clock is ticking.  I’m starting to think I should call this the cooking-while-sewing blog.  I’ve just finished getting the potluck stuff for today’s Cinco de Mayo gather all done & cleaned up, and all the things I need to take across town is loaded in the car. Now I have only a few hours left for working & tomorrow will be last minute insanity. (Yes, I know, I’m taking time blogging too, but I promised!)

Final time on the coat: 19.25 hours.  I had to check the numbers twice because that is way over what I expected. I opted to use the trim (that had to be put on anyway) to finish the edges & that took a lot more time than doing it fully lined. I serged the inside edge of the canvas to the coat hems & stitched them down flat. That made the edges very stiff.  Not lining also added way too much bulk at some seams, especially around the armholes where there ended up being 6 layers of the wool on a clipped curve because of the facings. Due to the amount of handling to get all the trim on, most of the edges stretched some as well.  This is a jacquard upholstery fabric and so the weave is not as stable as something plain-wove. I didn’t take the extra time to stabilize all the edges because I was trying to get this done fast.  Lastly, not lining it makes it look cheap. Some decisions you just regret in the end.  When you’re putting together something new that didn’t come with instructions, there is a lot of debugging (how do the pieces go together, what order to assemble in, getting the scale of details right).  The second one you rarely make has the benefit of all the knowledge you absorbed on the first one.  I have friends who do a complete mockup first to learn how to put something together & fix any fit issues. If I didn’t have to go to work every day, I might do that too.  

Things I’d do differently: Line it.  Use something lightweight for the trim. Use a slightly lighter weight & finer wool so it would felt on the prewash and so the finished garment isn’t so heavy. Skip the serger entirely & pink the seams.

Things that really worked: Using good wool fabric instead of velvet. I can’t guess how much added time there would have been using a pile fabric with a loose-wove backing. It would have been much bulkier and the shortcuts I took would have failed miserably.

Amidala's Coat, Part 2

After yesterday’s machine adventures I have a lot of time to make up. Thankfully, today went smoothly with only minor adjustments; had to debug the collar, but it’s ready for the trim & finishing.  Now that I’ve cut the points in & pinned everything, I wish I was taller!  Just taking a quick break to get a couple photos & back to work. Sewing time (so far) 8 hours including pinning, trimming & pressing in edges.

Guts--Another Best-laid Plans Kinda Day

Machine guts took over my morning. I decided last night that I’d get up early & focusfocusfocus on making the coat today. Got up at o-dark-thirty, set up a serger—and spent 2 hours fussing with it trying to get the adjustments right before I decided to switch sergers. 

Temperamental critters are sergers. Folks don’t seem to know what to do with them so they dump ‘em at garage sales after a frustrating adjusting experience. I bring one home occasionally as a project. Current inventory is 4 so you'd think at least one would be plug & play! Sergers are great if you know how to use them. I got my first one brand new (first-gen home Singer) in the early ‘80s and it’s been my workhorse all these years, but it’s become impossible to get good replacement parts for the things that are worn out and I’m always looking for a similar one for parts.  I can coax it to work but the cutting blade is useless. My backup is a low-end Brother that I got in trade & that is the one I was fussing with earlier. It’s more of a beginner machine & is usually forgiving.  Last year’s garage sale finds included a lovely Janome that the original owner failed to oil out of the box & is seized up. [side note, this is common because they ship them pretty dry & the manuals all say oil before use. Nobody reads manuals.]  I’m determined to make it work because I’d never spend that kind of money on myself & it feels like a treat. #4 I paid $5 for at a garage sale over the holidays and that is the Huskylock I have just spent a couple hours cleaning and oiling because I was tired of fighting the adjustments on the Brother.  This one is new to me & I’m happy to report it’s now fully functional.  Of course, part of the process was to soak the poor dry guts in oil & let it sit a while, so I’ve fussed around much of the morning cleaning the aquarium & starting a pot of ribs for dinner while I waited for the oil to do its work.  I expect the one I started with would like an oil & clean now too, and that might magically help with the adjustments. It's a mixed blessing to be able to repair my own machines.

Now I’m blogging & having lunch while I try to get back into the project frame of mind I had 6 hours ago.  The sun has come out, and I need to mow the lawn, and my kitchen smells of ribs, aquarium, and WD-40, which is kinda weird. 

Huskylock guts, nice & clean. It really needs sewing machine oil, but the spray tube on WD-40 is good for getting into tight spots.

Amidala's Coat, Part 1

Nothing is constant but change.  This week’s adventure: the coat!

Abandon the dyed velvet

You may remember that I didn’t have much of the velvet (about 3.5 yds) & wasn’t sure how much piecing I’d be able to do.  In the spirit of using what I had, the default was going to be to do the under layer in black wool.  Lucky me—I took a little trek to the Pendleton mill on sale day & scored 7 yards of an interesting textured jacquard that at $3.99/yd was a reasonable sub. I wasn’t happy with that velvet anyway, after all the effort to dye it, so it was nice to find a cheap alternative. The new wool is rusty copper & black. No peacock blue, but the black at least gives a similar effect and the copper isn’t too far off some of the internet photos of the original.

New wool jacquard

Patterning this wasn’t complicated because I had a couple good bought patterns to start from. From a Civil War era coat I got a front, back & collar. From the latest in caped suit jackets I got the ¾ cape. I tend to cut freehand with some basic measurements once I have the shape I want. I laid the pieces out on the fabric & it was pretty obvious that no-way was there going to be enough velvet for all the sections even with complex piecing, so that went upstairs & I rolled out the new copper stuff.  I do love Pendleton! Once the pattern pieces were laid out I checked/fixed measurements & re-drew the shapes on the fabric in the correct sizes. I’ll fine tune the point shapes when I have it partly sewn & on a dressform. I have 2 fronts, a back, a cape front & side, and 2 collars cut out.  That took the whole 7 yards with just a little scrap that I will use for armhole facings. The canvas strips that I’d dyed with the original blue for piping went into the vat to become brown.  The sewing machine is ready to go with brown thread & I just need to decide if I’m going to line it all, or serge the seams so it’s a quick job.  The original has piped edges. The fabric is heavy, so I’ll have to see what happens when there’s a hem and piping, or a binding—the bulk might be awful & too stiff and I might abandon that. That’s for another night. For now I’m happy to get the blog caught up. Honestly it takes longer to make the blog layout work than it does to create the thing!  

Yes, I could have made the pattern a month ago then shopped for fabric, and maybe even found something.  Or I may have loved the velvet enough to just go with using 2 fabrics.  I wanted that blue backing!  I could have re-designed the coat to have a single layer. I saw online one cosplayer did the coat in bright pink. It’s all random. 

Patterning & cutting: 4 hours

Amidala's Headgear

Wire frame, not much bigger than a commercial hairband

Another story of things taking longer than planned.  The headgear is taking forever! I’ve been working on the wig & headpiece in 30-minute bursts for over a week.  Mostly it’s been about glue & paint drying but the learning process has been interesting.  I knew I needed to cover the headpiece with leather or vinyl, but I wasn’t sure how bulky it would need to be.  Getting it to curve right was the biggest challenge so I approached it like a hat—bend & wrap heavy gauge floral wire into the shape then cover it with buckram to stabilize the shape, then cover that with vinyl.  The leather I had was just too stiff to work into complex curves so I used the much lighter weight vinyl.  I fussed with floral wire a couple hours including the medallion shape, then excluding it.  Some of you will recognize the end shape—the Ah-HA moment was when I realized I was making a French hood with the frame turned backward.  I should have guessed that before I started, with all the online info about the designer’s inspiration being Tudor.

Laying on the wet buckram

Ready for leather

Once I had the frame made the buckram had to be wet & wrapped, then that dried overnight.  Then another layer because the thin vinyl showed the structure & I wanted it to look smooth.  By the time I’d put a couple layers of buckram on & let them dry, then glued on the vinyl, the weekend was over & the thing was much bulkier than I wanted. 

During the drying breaks, I used aviation snips to cut up the plastic baskets. The design was a great match but the plastic was so stiff that it was going to be awkward to work with & would take a lot of stitching or structure to keep in place, which would show. It needed to follow the curve of the head even with the headband & hair bag under it so I decided to try heat to slump it into more of a head shape. I did some experiments with the heat gun (too much heat at a focal point, also melted the styrofoam head) and in the end what worked best was to set the plastic pieces on a stainless steel bowl in the oven on a lower temp & pull out the bowl as soon as the plastic drooped, being careful not to disturb the plastic until it cooled. I did that a few times in stages so that the thinner pieces didn’t just melt into blobs. Then the pieces of plastic had to be painted, then sewn together, then painted a couple more coats mostly to hide the thread. The whole assembly was glued to black vinyl & when it dried the edges were trimmed. Then all that was glued to the headband.  Downside of the vinyl: it was backed with white fuzzy stuff, so you could see all the edges. I blacked those out with a sharpie.

Repurposing dollar store desk organizer baskets

Pretty darn close!

The dyed sweater was cut into 2 long slightly rounded rectangles with the inside one slightly smaller than the outside.  I sewed up the edges to make a bag then pinned it to the wig & cut the lower  bag opening  edges & stuffed curls in until it looked right. The outside piece being bigger hides the stitching.  I strung beads & sewed them into the wig backing. 

Now that I know what it looks like I’d probably build the assembly on a headband & use the kind of leather you can soak & mold, cut the band & medallion in one piece, soak & shape it like a mask, then spray it black. Getting the scale right was the tough part—I kept expecting the sides to be bigger. The little curve insets at the wide ends were about the width of a pencil.  It’s not as close to the original as I’d hoped for, but will pass the 10-foot rule nicely.  You can see I need some fine tuning to get the bag sewn into the wig at just the right spot, and to get the beads to stay on top of the hair, but it’s almost done. If I have time at the end I may iron out those front curls & fix the bangs.  The last step will be to glue on the blue beads for decoration (so they don’t come off in handling).

I failed to keep up with the time, but a good guess would be ~10 hours of actual work spread out over a week so far.

It doesn't look like it took a week!

Petticoat Junction

I’m glad I had 8 weeks to do this because I’m down to 4 now & just getting into the hard part!

Before I can pattern the dress I need the undergarment. I’ve never had a quilted petticoat so I’m a little surprised at how HEAVY it turned out, but overall the effect is exactly what I wanted. I guess if you wear a blanket under your clothes it weighs what a blanket weighs (this took most of a twin bed comforter).  It definitely pulls on the shoulders. 

The fully lined petticoat is 2 layers of lightweight cotton and the skirt has an inner layer of cotton batting that stops just above the natural waist. I used the top of an old quilt for the inside and printer's cotton for the outside.  The batting smooths out the hoop lines so the dress won’t show them.  The hoop casings are on the inside layer & made of lightweight cotton waistband interfacing. I wrapped double fold bias tape over the  bottom to give the edge extra stiffness. I didn’t have enough spring steel for 4 hoops so I made the bottom one out of some salvage nylon cable stiffener I’d been saving for a corset experiment. That stitching about 2" from the bottom is to keep the 3 layers of skirt lined up.  

Inside casings

Hem casing

Time spent on the petticoat: 14 hours including pattern, cutting, fitting, sewing & a quick trip to JoAnn's for bias tape. That's more than I expected but I'm out of practice.

1/2" Spring steel is good for hoops. It comes in different weights & it can be cut with aviation shears or tin snippers.  The ends are sharp & need to have the corners ground off.  I dip them so they don't snag on the fabric.  Tool dip is easy to use, cheaper than the stuff they sell "just for corsetry" & even comes in a spray version.

Hoopskirt tools

1/2" Spring steel after grinding. Then I dip the tips so they don't snag on the fabric.

Random nylon stuff for lightweight boning

A Good Day to Dye

I have ~3 yards of abstract textured velvet, and it’s supposed to be linen & cotton, which means I should be able to dye it.  The backing needs to be peacock blue & the pile needs to be a coppery brown.  Dye tests on a swatch were promising and it’s the only thing I found in local fabric stores that had a good texture and at least a usable color. 3 yards isn’t enough for all the coat panels, but I’m hoping to piece the lower ones so they look like whole panels.  Meanwhile I’m keeping an eye out for other options. 

The fabric was machine washed in hot water and dried multiple times to remove any finish & soften up the fibers.  I did this over a few days so it would be ready when I got a dry day to work outside.  I don’t want to get dye all over the bathroom, instead I’ll roll out plastic on the patio & paint the dye on, then let the fabric sit in the excess liquid.  I can roll that up & rinse in the laundry sink before doing final rinses in the washing machine and hopefully keep the dye out of the house.

Finally got that dry sunny day so…

I need to dye the cotton sweater to make the snood, as well as the velvet.  Both need the coppery brown.  The velvet needs the peacock backing done first, then the brown pile.

Chemistry lab

Using cotton ball for color check

Stirring the dye

I decided to vat dye the sweater, so I mixed up Procyon with salt & soda ash in a bucket.  I have a range of dye powders so I did a pinch of this & that until the color was what I wanted. Vat dyeing needs constant stirring or it will streak. I wanted the color to be uneven, so I didn’t stir it much.  I left the sweater in the bucket about 4 hours, then rinsed it & hung it to dry.  I wanted it darker so I put it back in for another couple hours, rinsed & dried again.  The peach sweater is now a rich textured brown. 

Brown-after

Peach-before

I rolled out plastic on the garage floor & rolled up the doors. It was sunny out but windy, so working inside seemed like a better idea than the patio.  I put the fabric back-side to the floor because I wanted to keep the blue out of the pile as much as possible.  I mixed up the dyes in buckets, folded the fabric in half longways & brushed on the blue dye one half at a time with a big nylon brush. Once the fabric was saturated I put it back-side down to soak in the drippings.  After a couple hours the blue looked nice & dark & the fabric was only damp, so I flipped the fabric over & did the same thing to the pile side with brown.  I wasn’t worried about the colors bleeding into each other, that would make it more interesting. 

Ready to paint on dye

First half of peacock blue 

Viewed in the sun, the pile didn’t seem to be taking on the color very well. There’s a silvery-gray sheen to it.  I painted layer over layer until I ran out of brown dye but it seemed like the dye wasn’t changing the pile color much at all.  Then when I rinsed, both colors rinsed out more than I wanted them to.  O well, that’s the breaks.  Just I case, I pulled out a can of brown spray-on upholstery color & sprayed some on.  It makes the fabric stiffer, but it doesn’t wash out.  I’m still open to better options, but I have a day tied up in “making” the coat fabric now (and I don’t know yet if I have enough to fake the parts I need because I haven’t created the pattern).

Velvet before

Velvet after

Finished piece in the sun with the taffeta. Cotton rag picked up that much brown from wiping my gloves, velvet should be the same color!

Amidala's Brooch

You know how every project takes on a life of its own & grows into something daunting? I thought I’d start with the brooch. It’s a little thing & seemed easy to create. I printed out different sized pictures, rolled out Sculpey on wax paper, cut out the shapes like a batch of cookies, and tried to transfer the design.  I tried pressing it in with various tools, drawing on the clay freehand, punching outlines with pins, I even baked the photo onto the Sculpey but I wasn’t happy with any of it.  The design was too small to do well in the soft clay. I had some other ideas including using the Dremel to clean it up after baking & printing it really large on shrinky-dink plastic, cutting it out, then shrinking it down & gluing on a clay cookie and making a casting mold from that.  I kept wishing I knew how to model for 3D printing. Most of an afternoon later I decided to put it aside & work on something else.  Honestly, for a costume I could have glued the picture on a clay slab & that would be plenty.  That doesn’t satisfy my obsession with details.

Using pin to poke in the design through picture

What it looks like after the paper is peeled off

Some of the better results, printed photo is the far right--YUCK!

2 weeks later I was surfing for close-up photos of the dress sleeve & stumbled on a blog that talked about a woman who 3D printed Amidala accessories, which led me to a website that 3D prints cosplay parts.  Sigh. Here’s the printed one before & after I sprayed it with metallic paint I had in the garage & thank you Shapeways. It cost about the same as 2 blocks of Sculpey.  Bottom line, if I’d thought to look for 3D printing first I’d have saved a day of frustration. That’s the way this hobby works—there are so many directions you can go to solve the same problem, and it’s all up to interpretation anyway.

Raw plastic brooch & pin

Finished plastic brooch. Not quite the right color, but it's the paint I had

Amidala’s Peacock Dress from Star Wars Episode III

My company is going to have a costume contest for Star Wars day and I’ve been blabla at everyone for years about how I costume for a hobby but nobody’s seen me do anything.  After all, I’m not wearing historical garb to work. I decided I needed to do something geek-worthy. I was hoping I could pick something that could be at least partly re-used for another event on the same timeline and maybe even get a 3^rd use at a con.

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Goal: Make a recognizable Star Wars costume

                --Need to be able to drive in it & work in it

                --no handheld props

Deadline: Wear it on May 6, 2019

Budget: Lets see where it goes but it would be great to stay under $100.

Addl considerations: Use as much owned material as possible.  Track time spent.

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Week 1:

Research ~6 hours

+ Movie watching all weekend

I haven’t seen the older Star Wars films in years so step 1 was to Google for Star Wars costumes & step 2 was to watch the entire series to get into the mood & also see how the costumes I favored worked in motion.  That warranted a trip to the library to get all the episodes at once, as well as all the picture books I could. I really like Renaissance inspired shapes & I’m already familiar with the patterning & have functional support garments so I picked out 2 of Amidala’s court dresses that had Ren shapes & her velvet security detail uniform as an easy backup option.

1st choice was a gold moire’ gown with blue velvet coat that has a very interesting collar.  I already have a similar outfit in my SCA wardrobe in the right colors & fabrics so this seemed like an easy recycle.

 2^nd choice was the peacock dress because I have yardage of the right color shot blue taffeta and I love the hair.  It also looked like something I could re-use easily.

3^rd choice the copper velvet security uniform because it looks easy & would be something I could get a decent amount of re-use out of with minimal time invested.  

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I couldn’t find either dress in the films.  Uh-Oh.  More Googling.  Dress 1 never made it into the film, and dress 2’s scene got cut despite it was in all the pre-release publicity, even to the point that Simplicity released a pattern. I found 2 websites with excellent information including the design notes and the only photos I was able to locate of dress details. I have enough info now to do a decent copy, so I’m going to go for #2. It’s a blessing and a curse to find photos of swatches because you find out all the detail the photo & long camera shots didn’t give you. Also, the design notes tell me that the photos pixeled out some important fabric details. This is going to be more work than I originally hoped for because there is SMOCKING.  I picked up a smocking machine at an estate sale last year & this will be a chance to try it.  Also, except for the designer’s basic description, we don’t know what the dress looks like, because it’s always under a coat. The Simplicity pattern doesn’t follow the designer’s description (I was able to see the line drawings & layout in someone’s Amazon ad, $60 ouch) so the pattern can be disregarded. I’m starting from scratch.

Week 2: Create materials list, sourcing, map out the project

2/17-20 Made & fine tuned a list of all the things I think I’ll need based on design details & past experience.  ** Making the BOM & decide on dress design 4+ hr

2/21 PM Unearthed all the owned things from my studio so I know what’s on the shopping list.  The 2 most important items I don’t have are patterned velvet for the coat, and the wig.

** Finding all the owned stuff ~2 hr

2/22 Shopping day (woo-hoo!) A somewhat local wig shop (McMinnville) had a reasonable wig on their website so I made a trek there to see what it really looked like. Excellent find & clearance priced.

The clearance fabrics section of the local JoAnn yielded an interesting patterned velvet, not swirly like the original but random enough for a copy and it’s linen-cotton so I should be able to dye it to the right colors. 

I found a cotton sweater at goodwill that mimics the texture of the snood.  Another dye project.  I’ll also need to dye the canvas I’m using for the coat edging.

I had black leather to use for the headpiece but it was pretty stiff so I got some synthetic at JoAnn which might work better, just in case.

Lucky accident at the dollar store, the Easter baskets they were unpacking have a remarkable resemblance to the pattern of the top of the headpiece.  Bought a few of those.

Also bought pin backs for the brooch and an assortment of cheap kids’ pony beads that included some browns.  I have beads but I didn’t have quite what I thought would work. It would be easy enough to paint over what I have to save $ but for 5 bucks I don’t need to mess with painting.  

**Shopping 9 hr (This went well & I’m feeling lucky!  I have everything I need in the first round. That NEVER happens.)

NOTE: Photos of the actual film dress are not mine, they were printed out from other blogs and may be copyrighted by Lucasfilms.  To see better versions, more info, and citations go to these sites:

The Padawan’s Guidehttp://www.padawansguide.com/peacock.shtml

Star Wars: fit for a queenhttp://www.rebelshaven.com/SWFFAQ/peacock.php

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I Have A Plan (not necessary to execute in this order)

Dye Velvet & Other Textiles

Make Brooch

I decided to reproduce the brooch using Sculpey clay, since I had packs in blue, black & bronze.  I needed to buy the pin back. I considered baking loops into the back & sewing on, but some photos of the coat show it without the brooch.  I should be able to cut the design into the clay using carving tools & a printout of the brooch design.  From photos of the outfit I estimate it’s about 1.5 inches across.  I’ve printed out photos in multiple sizes so I can cut them out & see what looks best. Other methods to reproduce would be to cast in plaster, carve out of soap or wood, paint pretty much anything, or 3-D print it.

Make Headpiece

I’m planning to make a frame from heavy floral wire & cover it with buckram, then glue the black materials to it.  The baskets I got will need to be cut up & painted to a bronzy-metallic.  I should be able to sew them on top of the black headpiece & glue the blue beads on.

Make Snood

I didn’t find any good closeups of this.  It appears to be a beaded bag, probably made from a beaded scarf with quite a bit of texture.  I liked the look of lightweight boucle’ knits but only found them in synthetics, which don’t dye well. I got a reasonably similar texture in a knitted cotton sweater.  If there is excess time I can add beads later but that is a time-consuming detail that I’m not concerned about.

Add Beads & Snood to Wig

I have gold springs to mimic the metallic beads & brown pony beads. Should be able to pull the curls through the beads with a fine crochet hook, or wrap the tips of the hair in foil & thread them on like a shoelace. Past experience with beads in my own hair says I might need to glue them to hold in place.

Make Hooped Underdress

I have multiple sets of hoops but taffeta is lightweight & likely to show hoop lines unless I wear layers of petticoats. The original dress is Fortuny-pleated and has very crisp vertical lines.  I’m not pleating the skirt so any understructure will show.  The original design called for a quilted, hooped petticoat & there are online photos showing it’s Empire-style.  I’m electing to make a new one that works with the fabric since I don’t have one that type. The quilting will give the dress some real support without sagging between the hoops. I have a garage sale comforter that I tore apart, and it seems to be all cotton. I’ll put the color to the inside (it’s pink) and do the face surface in white cotton. That will make it re-usable for other historical costumes.

Make Dress

The big trick here is the smocking. Yoked turtleneck, Empire waist, A-line skirt, bishop sleeves, long Victorian cuffs with dangly bead trim, double row of beads top of collar. If it was cotton it could be Gunne Sax. The design notes say yoke is smocked, front is smooth. Photos show smocked cuffs, Fortuny pleat sleeves. You can’t see the sleeves above the elbow. You can’t tell from the photos that the neck is smocked because the pixel-expansion makes it soft, but once you know what you’re looking for the indicators are there. No idea what shape the yoke is BUT there don’t appear to be any seams above the coat closure…I think the designer visualized the dress as a blend of a period gown plus chemise.  That’s close enough to the shapes of Simplicity 8735 that I can use it as a starting point. I’m going to put a zip in the back & line the bodice & cuffs so I can support the smocking & also to protect the fabric & give it some weight. 

Make Coat

Once the velvet is dyed this is a couple lined layers with made edge piping (there was a swatch, heavy grain like canvas, unclear what color because it appears blue in some photos, gold in others, and mostly disappears in the distance shots). There are beaded tassels on the points, not sure yet how I’ll handle that but I have small black tassels & could also do them in yarn or possibly beads, or leave them off entirely.  The lining swatch for the original is copper taffeta.  I have plenty of black suit lining so I’m using that.  The real coat has all the edges decorated with couched cording.  I’m not even going to try & duplicate that.  It’s a year’s worth of handwork.  If I had an embroidery machine, maybe, but you can’t see it at all in the distance shots.  A lot of work just for the HD camera in case of a single close-up.  My biggest concern is there might not be enough velvet.  I got all there was, so I’ll have to pattern to fit the fabric.

Shoes?? Stockings??

The design notes call for brown court shoes (unseamed pumps) 1.5” heel & knee-high nylons, so it’s apparent they never expected the feet to really show.  I have a pair of brown buckle shoes & a pair of dyeables pumps that could be made brown.  Also a pair of satin beaded ones in a bright peachy color that are the perfect shoe but wrong color, possibly dyeable. 

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Dye Tests

The fabric content of the velvet is SUPPOSED to be linen & cotton but I never trust bolt labels on clearance stuff. Dye test looks like I can get the look I want.  The backing needs to pick up some blue color & the pile needs to be dark coppery brown.  I painted dry dye powder teal & peacock onto the back of a scrap saturated with dissolved soda ash, let it sit a couple hours & washed it out, then dried it.  Once it was dry I soaked it in soda ash again, sprinkled some brown on the velvet side, let it sit for a few minutes & washed it out.  The pile is more resistant to coloring but it did pick up some color in the short time there was dye on it.  I think by laying the fabric out flat dye side down & doing it in 2 stages I can minimize bleeding between the colors. I’ve never dyed big pieces without a ceramic bathtub and a spray to rinse with, but my new house has fiberglass baths that I don’t want stained.  My great idea is to put plastic all over the garage floor & flat dye 3.5 yards on the floor.  I don’t want to soak it so that the pile takes the blue dye so I’ll paint on the colors with a brush or sponge and trust gravity to keep it from wicking up too much.  An interesting experiment at least.

Fiber Reactive Dyes

Velvet Dye Test Back

Velvet Dye Test Front