2019: In Review

A review of (almost) all my favorite looks from last year. Mostly vintage looks, and mostly chronological by month. Some historical. Some new makes, and a lot of re-wears. The vintage was a mix of me made and true. And most true vintage only made this post if I made something for the outfit (like my giant Christmas corsage toward the end), or was just plain proud of my hair, haha! 

I hope to get around to posting about some of the more interesting outfits, but till then, I'm plopping these pics down for blog posterity. Cheers!

The Tsarina Gown - The Jewelry

I searched high and low, near and far, for a coronet close to the one worn by Alexandra Feodorovna. To no avail. So, I made one!

Finding the elements wasn't too easy either. I ended up going to quite a few stores. Basically, I made a circular wire frame, and glued everything to it. I used SO MUCH GLUE.

The Tsarina Gown - The Dressmaking Details

The gown construction was pretty straight forward, as far as turn of the century sewing goes. The big challenge comes in handling all the layers.

I've already posted a bit about this dress, so, to view the finished gown, see this post. To learn more about how I planned and executed the sequines, see this one.

The skirt ended up being a foundation of silk satin, a chiffon layer, trimmed in lace, and then the sequined silk tulle. All the skirt layers were joined to one waistband. I tried to decipher as much as I could from photos of the original dress. What was not obvious, I filled in with instruction from period sewing manuals and other extant dresses from the era. 

The Tsarina Gown - Planning and Executing the Sequins

For anyone that's been keeping up with me on Instagram, you'll know that the bulk of my sewing this past year has been devoted to sewing sequins. Lots and lots of sequins. Twenty six thousand of them.

Haha not all 26,000... This was the sample order!

After Costume College last year, I was super inspired by the Royalty theme. I finally settled on a direction because of my husband. While taking the Orient Express a couple years back, his beard had earned him the nickname, The Tsar (not by us, but it stuck). Well, Romanovs it had to be! I chose this particular dress (designed by Lamanova and worn by Alexandra Feodorovna) because it stood out as something complex and challenging that I wanted to tackle. In truth, it didn't end up being especially complicated, but it did take a lot of patience and careful planning. And time. It took about 200 hours to sew 26,000 sequins. I diligently kept track. 

The Costume College Gala

Guys!! I actually remembered to take pictures this year! I always get so swept up that I completely forget to take photos. I made such an effort this year!

I'll share about my dress in the next post. For now, here's a bunch of pics from the gala night. Everywhere you looked there was such amazing work to see!!!

Summer Vintage

I'm playing major catch up on the blog today. I must admit, ever since I started posting on Instagram, my poor blog has been terribly neglected. It's just so easy to quickly share a photo of a finished project. But I've had this blog for so many years, and have documented such a journey of sewing, I want to get back to posting on it.

Oh, but I've been so intimidated with catching up! Well, I have to start sometime... So, here goes! I thought I'd start with an easy one to type up today: my favorite pieces from this summer's vintage wardrobe.

I totally lived in forties shorts this summer. I made two pairs from McCall 6449: a white cotton twill pair that was true to the pattern and a seersucker pair. I changed those to zip up the side. The blouses in these two photos weren't made by me. The grey blouse is Freddie's of Pinewood and the white is from Target.

I had lots of the white/caramel seersucker and made a full playsuit. The skirt was self drafted, and the top was Vogue 5469. I wore the whole look to Viva this year. Speaking of Viva, which is a weekend long Rockabilly convention held here in Vegas, we had such a blast! I can't wait for next year. The music is great, but the shopping and people watching is the best. The vintage you see walking around is incredible!

1920's Beaded Shoe Buckles

My very favorite part of my New Year's outfit was making the shoe buckles. The top pic are mine, the picture below is of an original pair, on the same shoes. So why not wear the originals and call it done? Because for me, the making is 99% of the fun! It was really handy to have an original pair to reference, however.

A Robe de Style for New Year's Eve

In the fall of last year, friends of ours invited us to a 1920's themed New Year's Eve party near Disneyland. I really didn't like the last twenties dress I made, so I decided to have a bit of fun and make a robe de style. 

Unless you're pretty into fashion history, most people don't associate this silhouette with the twenties (cough cough flappers and fringe only cough), but I just fell in love with it, and decided it was much more flattering than a shift style, for my body type. 

Fun with Carmen Miranda!

I, yi, yi, yi, yi, I like this verrrry much! Haha ok so this was really fun to wear. Sooo completely different than what I usually do!

I actually prepared most of it for a party last year, that we didn't end up going to. So this October, I pulled it out, added a couple more details and I was good to go! I wore it to a party we go to at the lake's marina. A lot of people really go all out for it, so it's been a fun event. 

Here's Carmen in all her feathery, decked out glory! I love her!

Mary Ellen's Swim Suit: A Look at a 1940's Original

When I venture into a new era, if possible, I like to find an original garment that I can add to my collection, study, and love. I thought the name made this swim suit especially fun! 

I'm not sure if this was a bought or home-made suit. The somewhat sloppy nature of the stitches suggests home-made, but the overcasting on the seams leads me to question this. Any ideas? 

Either way, I'm loving that stripe matching in on the skirt!

A 1940's Bathing Suit

I have always thought 1940's swim suits are just the cutest! I finally used a trip to the beach as an excuse to make one. 

I vacillated over what fabric to use, as the 40's are out of my regular purview. I looked into stretchy blends. I looked into rayons. I looked into wools... And by the time I spent all this time hemming and hawing over fabrics, it was going to be too late to order anything in time. So, I settled on some cute checked linen I'd had in the stash for ages. Time to use it! 

The Aid of Art to Represent Nature

National Portrait Gallery, London

We are all familiar with Camille Clifford. Oh, those curves! But wait, here she is again, about ten years later, when curves are out and that slim line is in. Wait, what? Where did those curves go? 

National Portrait Gallery, London

My guess: the padding came out.

I recently made up this Atelier Sylph corset pattern. I made a mock up, which fit relatively well, but didn't actually make any changes to it. It's such a curvy and dramatic silhouette, I wanted to see how it fit out of the box. 

Goldfield Days 2017

Just like last year, Goldfield Days fell the weekend after Costume College. So, again, we had fun road tripping all week and ended up in Goldfield just in time to open our building for the event. We open up the John S. Cook Bank Building as a bar for the day and sell beer and shirts and mugs even have a ghost hunt! With all the proceeds going toward the restoration and upkeep of the 13,000 square foot building. 

Inside the 1902 Worth Gown for the CoCo Gala

A while ago I was looking online for warp printed silk for an 18th century dress, when I came across a fabric. Immediately I thought of this gown:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
2009.300.2009a, b

This particular gown is at the Met. It's a House of Worth gown from 1902. The fabric is very distinct, and though the fabric I found wasn't 100% exact, it definitely had the vibe, and the motif was the right size and pattern to work with the design and cut outs that are on the original dress. I had to make it!

A Turn of the Century Foundation Skirt

After going through the evening gown I shared in my last post. I started on a foundation skirt for my own evening gown. A foundation skirt is basically a very engineered petticoat that goes under a gown, once skirts stop routinely being lined, around the turn of the 20th century.

To construct this skirt, I gathered my information from a few different places, since I have never actually seen one in person. Authentic Victorian Dressmaking Techniques, edited by Kristina Harris, is indispensable. It's a copy of Butterick's 1905 manual, Dressmaking, Up to Date. If you don't already have one, get a copy! It explains pretty much everything I did to make this skirt, as well as everything else you might ever need to know about turn of the century sewing. I'll make a note on what pages the info came from throughout the post.

Inside a Turn of the Century Evening Gown, Part 2: The Skirt

Yesterday I shared pictures of the bodice. While the inside of the bodice is fairly messy and pieced, the skirt of this gown is fantastic! It is so heavy and engineered!

I'm always really excited to get to study a skirt, since they seem to rarely survive, while bodices, which don't employ yards and yards of fabric just waiting to be remade, are so much more common.

The shape is fairly simple. Here is is laid flat. The CB is to the right, CF on the left. 

Inside a Turn of the Century Evening Gown, Part 1: The Bodice

It's been a while since I've shared the insides of one of my collection. I pulled this gown out of the tissue to study the insides for a new evening gown I have started. This dress looks like it could be home-made, but if it was, it was made by someone who knew what they were doing. I suppose it could have been made by a private dressmaker, but I very much doubt it came from any kind of fashion house or department store. There are no labels and the inside is kind of a mess. Of course, the messy insides are my favorite! So, on to the masses of pictures!

I'll start with the bodice today. The skirt will follow, since there are just too many pictures for one post!

Enjoy!

A Rose Gold 30's Evening Gown

Over Derby Weekend, we had tickets to one of the black tie galas. I am such a sucker for an opportunity to dress up in black tie!

I've been wanting a satin 1930's evening gown for ages, so I took this opportunity to make one! And the color fit perfectly for the June's Historical Sew Monthly challenge: metallics.

I used Vintage Pattern Lending Library's #T6573. Great dress. Very forgiving size-wise as it's such a loose style. I did have to add about an inch to the hem, and probably could have added a bit more. I am only 5'4", so definitely check the length if you use this pattern! I opted out of adding the fabric flowers at the front, since this wasn't actually a costume event, and wanted to keep everything simple. I really wanted to make an evening jacket for it, but just ran out of time. Next time!

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of the gown until very late in the evening, so it's a bit wrinkly. Not to mention, my hair had kind of had it with the humidity. On the other hand, I was able to get a couple pictures in the lobby with no people around, so there is always a silver lining :)

So, the facts:

The Challenge: June, Metallics

Material: Silk crepe back satin

Pattern: Vintage Pattern Lending Library's #T6573

Year: Late 1930's

Notions: Thread, snaps, hook and eye

How historically accurate is it? I want to say totally, though I haven't yet personally seen a 30's dress with machine rolled hems. Though, I do have some very old rolled hem feet and it suggests it in my 1940's sewing book. Just throwing that out there.

Hours to complete: Maybe a week of sewing, here and there. I let the dress hang a couple days before hemming it.

First worn: Last weekend

Total cost: A few yards of silk crepe back satin

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Construction of the dress went easily for the most part, but it got a little fiddly attaching the top of the train to the waist of the dress. The pattern directions got a little hazy there, and I'm sure I just interpreted them wrong. But because of the nature of the silk, I couldn't play around with it too much, so I picked a method and went with it.

I chose to hem the dress mostly with a narrow hem foot, since it suggested this in my 1940's Ruth Wyeth Spears sewing book. Very easy! I bound the neckline and arm holes with bias binding. I love the top stitching and cut of the bodice. It's kind of sporty.

The inside seams were pinked, since apparently over casting would have been a "waste of time." I love this:

The dress closes with at the side. As suggested in the sewing book, I put a hook and eye at the waist, where there would be the most stress. The rest of the placket is fastened with snaps.

Under the dress, I wore a low backed slip, made from Vintage Pattern Lending Library's 1930 Slip Pattern. I omitted the vertical darts (time constraints) and the side closure. The side closure was unnecessary since the slip had ample room to be put on over the head because of the low back. I also made a matching pair of tap pants from similar colored silk charmeuse. I used Mrs Depew's 1930's Tap Pants Pattern again. I used the fabric satin side in on the pants (which is so nice against the skin!), but satin side out for the slip, so the dress fabric would slide over it better.

I would have loved to wear a girdle with it, which would have really smoothed out the tummy area (I really need to lay off the snacks...), but since it wasn't actually a 1930's event, and I didn't have a lot of time, I said eh. Of course, if it was properly fit, I guess it wouldn't have really shown... Just another thing to add to that endless to-do list!

Good night!

Vogue 7464 Goes to Kentucky

When I'm not sewing, my other passion is horses. 

This year we were lucky enough to attend the Kentucky Derby, which has been on my list since, well, forever. The tickets we got were actually for two days, the Oaks day and the Derby day. I bought a hat for the Derby (I found a totally rad one and couldn't pass it up), but for the Oaks day I decided to make my hat.

Pink is the color of the day for the Oaks; it's the Race for the Lilies. So, pink it was!

1930's Undies

To go under my beach pyjamas, I needed some era appropriate undies. I chose white crepe de chine, so they would look better under the very obvious facings of the white linen pants. Crepe de chine also has the advantage of sewing easily and it washes well, too. 

These are made up from Mrs. Depew #2023. I am really liking these print at home patterns. So convenient! I like them even more now that I got one of those guillotine paper cutters. Oh my, the cutting of the paper edges goes SO fast now! Highly recommended!

These were done with a mix of machine and hand sewing, so they went together quite fast. The hand sewing was really only needed for the fiddly bits, like the button holes and gusset.

The waistband was faced with self-bias and the hem was just turned up and stitched. I can see these being a lot of fun to make up with a lace hem or embroidery. 

So, after being in the 20's and 30's so many months in a row, I just dove into the giant UFO pile and lined up a selection of things to finish up. Expect to see some 1780's and 1860's coming soon! Back to the really fun stuff!

Have a happy Sunday, all!