Side by Side!

I thought it would be fun to share another of my Brownie photos. As I was having my picture taken with the Brownie, I was also having a digital picture taken. I did the same thing with the tintype taken ages ago. See that here. This one is a little less different, I think :)

Brownie Pictures!

Last year at Costume College, a group of us used my c. 1919-1924 Brownie No. 2E camera at the beach and at the Huntington. I finally developed the pictures! I present some of them here without comment--the rest, including the cats, of course, are in the Flickr set!

The camera is incredibly easy to use. This model uses 120 roll film which is still made. Just load it according to the manual, available here online, rest the camera against your stomach, look in the viewfinder, and move the shutter. It's that easy! There are three apertures, and the manual explains when to use them. The main page also has a list of cameras and the film they take. Very useful if you want to use the camera itself!

1925 Bathing Costume

What does it mean when you find a bathing suit pattern (in Women's wear of the 1920s that you think is completely adorable, then you find the original at the Met, a fashion plate featuring the bathing suit and the original patent for the suit?

You make it, of course!



The construction is really quite straightforward. It's made of red wool jersey from Nature's Fabrics. The tunic is two pieces--front and back--worn over a fitted undersuit. The body of the undersuit is also two pieces, with a gusset set into the crotch and shoulder straps. The tunic is embroidered with Appleton crewel wool from my wonderful local embroidery store, Stitcher's Paradise. I used the stretch stitch on my machine for most of the construction. The neck and arms are finished with straight strips (no need for bias!) of fabric sewn first by machine, then hand finished to avoid visible seam lines.



For accessories, I had a paper parasol bought at faire, a black silk taffeta trimmed with green cloche from the D.L. Designs 20s cloche pattern, and Capezio Cobra ballet shoes trimmed with green silk taffeta.





For the ultimate accessory, I had a green and blue bathing cape based on one in the 1921 Delineator. It's a circle cape with a collar and straps that cross the chest to close it. I based the collar construction on an 18c men's cape in Costume Close-Up. It's just a trapezoid on the bias. So easy! Except for the back seam (my fabric wasn't wide enough to cut a half circle without a seam), the cape is sewn by hand. I sort of broke the tensioning screw on my 1917 machine when I was making it (I knew trying to fix the tension was a bad idea!) and the tension on my modern machine is also shot, so I had no choice but to sew by hand. I *really* need to get to the sewing machine repair place!





Though I went in the water with the full suit, to try to go in a little deeper, I took the tunic off. Embroidery, you know! We ended up not going in very deep though, as the waves were a little strong and there was a sudden drop in the water right at our part of the beach.



The before and after pictures of my shoes! They got a little wet and sandy :)



The ties stayed remarkably well once I found where they wanted to be tied. They also got very sandy.



The hat was quite simple and only took a few hours to make. It's not strictly a copy of anything, but rather loosely based on hats I had seen.





And the embroidery!

And for the long story of me making it, likely with many random things thrown in, my Live Journal tag for the suit!

And for pictures of the trip to the beach with my friends' wonderful suits as well, the Flickr set!

Checking In!

It's been a horribly long time since I posted, and even longer since I've posted anything costume related. However, there is a very good reason for that--I teach 6th grade, and school started three weeks ago. I'm rather dead to the world. I have a much harder time adjusting to the school year than I should because I essentially work the same hours that I slept in the summer. Really. In the summer I usually sleep from about 4 something in the morning to about 1 in the afternoon, and during the school year, I work from 7 something in the morning to 2 something in the afternoon, and then there's the lovely thing known as grading.

Anyway, enough of that! Since a costume blog post is nothing without pictures, I thought I might as well post a picture of a project that I'm working on. Though working might be too strong a word at the moment. Since work started again, I've done about 18 inches of straight stitch embroidery :)



It's a 1925 bathing suit that's at the Met, is patterned in Women's Wear of the 1920s (can you tell I love this book? A friend calls it the Pink Book of Awesome, and it's a totally perfect name for it), and was patented in 1925. How incredible is that to have SO much information about one suit?

So work goes on on that. I have some absolutely beautiful Appleton crewel wool to embroider it. I'm also planning on making a hat and bathing shoes. Making the shoes? Should be interesting!

It will be a bit before I get that finished, most likely. It's planned for a day at the beach prior to Costume College 2012.

In what I'm working on and need next news, my Regency Renaissance faire costume is done, so the event after that is a Civil War reenactment-lette. I'm making a dress with a very bright yellow cotton print for that. It'll be a yoked bodice, box pleated skirt, bishop sleeves with pleats sewn down at the top. I'll keep the blog posted! Right now, only a pocket is done, and that I sewed the print upside down. Um, oops? But it doesn't show! It is my ease back into doing things project, and as such, it will be completely hand sewn as that's so much easier for me than lugging out the machine.

So, I'm just posting to say yes, I do still exist! Though I'm not completely sure I feel like I do this time of year :)