Card on table: current costume obsessions

I’ve been looking through my stash of fabrics with a calculating eye and have finally settled on a few absolutely desperate to make right now projects. Most of which use my stash in some way or another 🙂 This is all locked in and I have plans for what occasion each will be for 🙂

 

Freya from Hunstman: Winter’s War (robes and armour) & Norma Shearer from Upstage

The armour can be from my stash (so lucky!) so can Norma’s gown. It’s the robes that is currently making my brain itch because I need to calculate and create my patterns precisely.

But that slinky velvet. Obsessed. There is a preview that has survived and it’s at the NZ film archive! The skirt front of the gown isn’t so exciting but the rest is. And I have many options to adapt the front of the skirt. And a lot of research as slinky gowns abound in the 1920s.

 

An early mantua. 

These are illustrative only, I am trying to debate between my stash options of black ribbed silk or a shot pale blue polyester. 9m of each!

Sheer 1870s

I have about 12m of cotton net. Now that I have my fluffy Robe de Style in lace I can put it all towards a fashion style that has had a dedicated folder for over a decade!

 

These are “new” projects. I am still working on my wall of things but these are mostly stash busting so really just a shifting around in my workroom 🙂

 

 

To finish:

Marie Antoinette: thought I’d forgeotten? AHAHAHAHAH! All my trims are here so time to start patterning and washing sizing out of trims 🙂

Cleves red velvet: this is long term hand sewing. And fiddly. But everything is put aside.

Valois: the skirt needs hemming and I am worried I have been rushing the stitches. Also the silk is insanely difficult to work with. I have scrap silk that is less difficult to try!

Silver Spanish: it’s lining, so much lining. I also took out some extra weight from the skirt to make it wearable.

Princess de Cleves: You’d think a doublet would be easy. Nope. But I figure I can couch some braid over the existing braid for some extra texture!

 

Hannibal gown: reassembly!

Phantom wedding gown: in storage with the Hannibal gear, no rush, but it is silly to leave it this long!

Mina: I have to make the lining absolutely perfect as the silk has zero stretch and all my bodices have had some stretch. I now have the same ripstop cotton as for the bustle so it will be done!!! For my birthday? Maybe…

Worth Sunburst: on hold, I did just find my 9m length of pale aqua silk chiffon so I may wind up with my own interpretation of the gown seeing as there are two extant versions already. Also I have glass pearls set aside and that is more of the Kyoto style than Met style 🙂

 

Ahsoka: lost a bit of steam on this. Still want to finish her 🙂

Mothma: my dress shrank :/ I’m thinking of passing on the fabric parts to just reset.

Darth Talon: New bikini is fantastic! ANd I do need new lekku. My 2nd set are just too heavy 🙂

Ashara: potentially be remade into my own SWTOR jedi knight Neimhaille 🙂

Nyreen: With Andromeda coming out and more female turians running around I dug out my robes for her that were about to be thrown out. So resizing them 🙂

Leia: my senatorial robes have just gone into the wash, I got new photos for my tutorial, and finally found a pair of soles that work! SHe has no heel, her shoes are made with that really gummy rubber and there are so many cool seams in her boots anyway.

Draenei: slightly on the back burner again. I have a habit of wanting to figure out how then figuring it out and then not really wanting to finish 😉

 

So at the heart of it I love patterning, and figuring stuff out, not so much the final stages. Ah well 😉

18th century musings

Well this has been a tough decision and I’m still not sure.
(edit for livejournal: welp, not that difficult. In folding my fabrics away I realised how much like the V&A mantua my blue fabric handles, I think I'll be making a blue one :) That gives me a beautiful and "simple" garment while figuring out what to make from the silk.)

First is my 100% dino shot taffeta. It’s a really heavy weight incredibly crisp and is such a beautiful shade I can forgive the content. But I usually have a very distinct line between historic and historic inspired.

Second is my black silk. Very heavy, very heavy. Also able to be used front and back.

Seriously torn as to which to make from it. Other options for the blue is a francaise or 1870s convertable gown.

The black silk can be anything from 16thC on!

Also my beaded silk? Sigh it really does look fab as a Reinette inspired gown. But I also want to go total fantasy with it and yet it drapes so nicely over hoops.

Also coming soon, a fancier Leia wig tutorial. Also her buns are so much bigger than most costumers realise… I need to do a scale diagram.  But her buns sit on her dress collar.

They may also get bigger the more sass she expresses.

And also I am having major issues with the way the lace sits at the crown. I have already done major work on this so I may as well get the sectioning clips out to stitch that down!

Shifting some stuff.

https://www.facebook.com/michaela.de.bruce/media_set?set=a.10153402715250620&type=3&pnref=story

The super light organza bits can be tossed in for free because well they are otherwise getting donated.

But all the green and purple was chosen to go together to make the Broadway Ursula- but I keep thinking it look slike something for a huge Mardi Gras costume.

And a quick guide" 1m=40" so more than a yard, I am about 42" from waist to floor. 

updates to be

 

While researching the Robe de Style I kept coming across gowns that were fitted to the body and accentuated curves. This is surprising to many followers of fashion however it really shouldn’t be 🙂

Then as now there was a lot of media covering fashion, many styles that had short lives, many that had long lives. What is remembered tend to be what is most shocking or memorable to later generations.

I’ve lost the date for a number of photos so to make anything I share here pertinent I am going through several antique dressmaking books.

I always feared the 1920s, but the drive then was not for shapeless, there is a lot of knitwear that makes you just wonder what might have been… it’s no coincidence the bias cut developed in this era to flourish the start of the next decade.

The roots of the slinky bias cut were well in place.

 

kindness

Social media feeds often make it feel like we are the owners of the space we comment in, instead we need to remember that they are merely windows or doors into the lives of others.

When we reply without pause to think we wind up making our response more important than the person.

Is that blunt comment really helping?

Is that joke really funny?

There are shared spaces where we all expect the unexpected. It is a very different thing to go into a space maintained by an individual.