julie is amazing

Really she is. She's come up with a blackwork design for me. The last time I did this, I ended up with a free-handed, made up as I went, not-having-much-to-do-with-the-renaissance sort of pattern. It looked something like this:


 

Julie raised the bar. She raised it to something requiring counting. She even raised it to something requiring counting in half stitches. It's the flaming onion!


 

I love it. Julie did a nice job of documenting her myriad inspirations for this, so instead of trying to do the same, I direct you to her site.

Three cheers for Julie.

shades of scarlett...

I am most of the way through a corded petticoat. I say most of the way because I think I may add another 20 yards of cording or so. I still haven't taken any pictures. I decided to ignore evidence suggesting that the petticoat should be gored and just corded the heck out of my standard big-butt-enhancing super-gathered tube type skirt. I thought it would be a fun experiment, and I'm happy. Since the cording doesn't hold out the skirt in the same way that something stiffer would, I didn't get the southern bell look, just the cone I was aiming for. The petticoat falls in big swooping curves, but when I tried an existing dress over it, the dress just bridges those. It's nice and swishy and it holds my skirts out far enough that it's pretty drafty underneath. It makes my old dress way too short, which is pretty funny-looking.

A bit more on construction of the skirt... I used some kind of 5/16 cording from the drapery-making section whose intended purpose eludes me. This got pre-washed, pre-dried, and then pre-untangled. Tip: throwing 30 yards of cord into the laundry without skeining it is stupid. I folded several rows into the hem at the bottom. Then I just used a wide zigzag stitch to attach the cord directly to the skirt in a big spiral. I figured that while the zigzag is ugly, it's not that much worse than a bunch of bias tape, which was my original plan. Since I neglected to ever purchase said bias tape, this worked out. I actually ended up going back and getting more, which I ran right alongside the first spiral. This added a lot of stiffness, so I'm going to do one more pass. And then I'll try to remember to get a picture.

corsets bite.....

into your squishy bits that is. And also, they bite in the more colloquial sense. Mine is annoying the squish out of me. There's a fundamental thing about my corset that I don't like, which is that while it's comfortable over the shift, it's bloody uncomfortable once a dress gets put on over it. I think that this is because the dress drags down on the tabs at the bottom and sticks all the weight of the skirts onto the hips, which gets painful in a hurry. I think too, that part of the problem is that my old dress has shoulder straps that are too long, so they don't take enough of the weight. Or any, perhaps. However, I have this theory that if I add straps to the corset, then no matter how badly designed the next dress might be, it won't matter. So here's the thing....modern supportive garments work with the magic of elastic. Wide-set straps with no stretch to them exist solely to fall off of one's shoulders. This is what I discovered after painstakingly handsewing on straps, wriggling around trying to lace stuff in the mirror, adjusting the straps, wriggling around again, adjusting....etc etc etc.

Clearly I can't use elastic, nor criss-crossing straps a la the last bridesmaid dress I, um, altered, to, um, make myself not have to go berserk in the church. So my plan is to cut them on the bias in the hope of getting a little stretchiness and to make then enormously wide and curved under the arms. In other words, to turn the bloody thing into a standard renfest wench bodice. If I don't get distracted by something, perhaps I'll work on that tonight.

art school

I didn't go to art school. It shows. Nonetheless, here's my concept sketch for the Venetian dress. It's pretty generic late-1600's stuff. We have the pointy front, the ladder lacing, the two-part sleeves, the full camisia, the fancy fabric, and the plain guards. I am sure I can find a way to make this more generic, but I haven't quite figured out how yet. Actually, this picture bears a striking resemblence to the princess drawings I would do as a kid except that those were mostly pink. I'm sure my 10-year-old self would be delighted to know that someday I'd have the ability to clothe myself as that princess.


 

It's colored almost entirely in orange. That's because I only have 8 pencils, and also because as mentioned, I didn't go to art school. Also, I'm not this skinny, but it's my picture and so I get to decide.

Despite some unsolicited commentary (ahem), the dress is not covered in tiny flames. If anybody observes that once I have horns on my head this will be quite appropriate, they will be in trouble. Big trouble. Big orange trouble.

orange

Behold the Tribble in all of his terrible orange majesty.


 

The mighty Tribble is known far and wide for his vast powers of orange-ness. And also his useless-ness, stubborn-ness, tubby-ness, and other unflattering things ending in -ness. He has deigned to lounge on my fabric. Undoubtedly he thinks that having fabric to match him is really only his due. We'll assume that he has made himself at home on this nice new fabric to provide a color standard and not just to seed it with his fur, although the Tribble is in fact fond of multi-tasking.

You are perhaps at this point assuming that this is a gratuitous cat picture. But no, I provide it for a purpose. If I wanted gratuitous, I'd have included the rest of the menagerie. Or at least picked a picture where he wasn't looking so cranky. Despite my sincere desire to call my fabric something vaguely glamorous and evocative, such as perhaps bronze, amber, cinnabar,or titian, it seems that I will be wearing orange. Thanks Tribble.

sir mix-a-lot

I present to you….. Corset 1.1. Corset 1.0 never even got a picture taken of it. The tabs were shorter and the discomfort of wearing it was….regrettable. I improved on it by cutting the tabs higher and rebinding it. It’s two layers of canvas duck. Most of the boning is electrical cable ties that have been cut to length and had the pointy bits cut off. The wider channels are a double layer of polyboning. The binding is cheap ribbon. It’s all terribly unperiod, but vaguely conical.

 
 

Coming soon for your viewing pleasure….Corset 1.2. I’m planning on adding straps. I think it makes more sense. For one thing, it’ll be guaranteed not to slither its evil way down at some inopportune moment, which is, I confess, a very real fear of mine. Since actual period garments all have straps, I’ve no idea where I got the idea not to include them in the first place. No matter. Stay tuned.

Oh and Julie….start writing all those fabulous compliments to encourage me, eh?

fabric fit for a .... um...whatever

 
So here's a picture of my fabric that Anita was kind enough to take the other day. It's sort of a neat color. I say it's orangey-brown. Anita says it's bronze. Plainly Anita has more taste. The pattern is about a handspan wide.

I'm really partial to this fabric. I found it on the flat-fold remnants table at Joann's a week or two ago. It's synthetic of course, but I like the color enough that this is ok with me. It's heavy enough to give some body to the dress.

Et tu, Elisabetta?

Oh but yes. Plainly, the world needs another dress diary. I have not the gift of gab, but a certain wenchy sort of the Anita variety has been dangling her newest blog before me like a, um, blog in front of a blogless person. Okay, that simile was lame. Which statement, incidentally, is pretty close to what the title of this blog was going to be. I digress.

At any rate, I'm somehow part of a plan to create a trio of Venetian beauties of the not-so-virtuous persuasion for the Maryland Renaissance Faire this year. Yes. That. The Dangerous Beauty bug. Infectious little bugger.

However, since the aforementioned wenchy Anita and the not so wenchy since she doesn't steal fabric Julie are kindly documenting their dress-making progress, I figure it's the least I can do.