The Screaming Yellow Sacque--A Robe a la Francaise!

Now that the Epic Williamsburg vacation is over (sigh), I have many updates! For now, they are of the 'look at me' variety, but each and every costume has a tutorial of some sort forthcoming. For this dress, it's sleeve ruffles and the blue silk cloak. Enough of that though, on to the dress!



I wore the dress twice. First to the theatre to see The Walking Statue, or The Devil in the Wine Cellar, and then to dinner at the King's Arms.



On the agenda for next time--bigger sleeve flounces. I hit The Wall before the trip and finished a pinball and started a knitted pineapple instead :)



I was very happy that it was cool enough to wear it with accessories! The hotel costuming I usually do just doesn't lend itself to that! The cloak is silk taffeta lined with China silk and interlined with not period but inexpensive and not overly warm the way wool would have been cotton flannel. It's trimmed with marabou leftover from my pink and green court dress. The tutorial for the muff is here and the muff cover is here.



My hair is really quite simple. It thankfully teased, which it often refuses to do. I just set it in sponge rollers, teased most of the middle section, pulled up the back, stuck in a rat made of fake hair, and smoothed the front over it, then had a friend stick things in the back to cover any wonkiness.


I'm glad that after having the fabric for I think about 10 years (I bought it after my first or second Costume College!), I finally made it! I'm also glad that I didn't make it so long ago, as it is a better dress than I would've been capable of then :)

Here's my Live Journal tag about the dress. It includes a few construction pictures. I essentially made this dress in four days. Counting the lining, it was five; however, if you consider that I made the lining for my Virginia cloth anglaise the day I started this and it's essentially the same lining...

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!

18th Century Short Cloak--A Tutorial!

As I was browsing 18th century cloaks online, I came across a great page at The Hive Online about short cloaks. The page, as 17 April 2016, is now a gardening site.


My finished cloak!

Making the cloak is very, very easy. Mine took about an hour and a twenty minutes, and had I been happy with the ties, would've taken an hour and two minutes. Yes, I did time it :)

For information on patterning, do visit the above website. I did a pattern in muslin first, not so much because you need to, but because wool is $20 a yard, and I didn't want to make a mistake. I bought 1 1/4 yards.


Here we have the pattern pieces--one cloak, two collars. The cloak body is essentially a stretched half circle. Please note that I'm the "very short and skinny" person mentioned in the article and I didn't have to piece it. I did though shorten it one inch on each side from my pattern. I wasn't about to piece one inch by about 4 inch pieces. It was much easier to make it slightly less full. I don't think such a small piece would even hang correctly in such a thick fabric. I have seen originals with much smaller pieces pieced, but losing a part of a sleeve is much different than a cloak!


Gather the neckline and pin the collar into place, right side of the cloak to wrong side of the collar (not that it really matters with many wools!), with the collar pointing down. Sew with a backstitch.


Pin the second half of the collar into place, wrong side of the cloak to wrong side of the collar, with the collar pointing up. Sew into place with a whipstitch. (I used backstitch. In typical me fashion, I read the article, read Costume Close-Up, and then did my own thing stitch wise because I forgot what I read and didn't recheck the stitch until I was done.) This will fold over, and the gathered neckline of the cloak will be sandwiched between the two layers of collar.


Sew the ties in (I used black wool twill tape), and you have a cloak! So easy, and it really was nice and warm to wear. Of course, it was about 40 degrees when I wore it, which I normally don't consider warm enough for outer wear, even in the real world, but it was still much warmer with it on than with it off :)

Three Magazines, One Fashion Plate

Years ago, this would be 2001 or 2002, I had a very good mail day in which I received a copy of a fashion plate from La Belle Assemblee and a bound edition of The Lady's Monthly Museum from 1829. Much to my surprise, one of the dresses in one of the fashion plates was identical. I wrote about them on my webpage.

So imagine my surprise when a third copy came up on Pinterest! This one is from 1828, and was published as Costumes allemand et francois.

This dress was also redrawn in Costume in Detail

Here's a link to the pins--I couldn't post them next to each other, so a screenshot and Flickr it was!

Quite exciting, no?

Virginia Cloth Anglaise and Another Muff!

I wore my Virginia cloth dress to An Evening with the Redcoats at the Skirball Cultural Center this past weekend, so that of course means pictures! Since this wasn't a costume event, there aren't a lot. I made sure to get a few posed shots though!


Front and back views--and oops, my sleeves are pushed up a bit! I noticed this after, pictures, of course :)



A closer front and back view. You can see where the front is pinned under the robings.



With a few accessories--my new mitts and an apron. Oh, and with the sleeves more properly placed, even if my shift cuffs aren't buttoned.


And with my new green short cloak. I took pictures of making this--the whole hour and 20 minutes it took--and based it off this page on cloaks.


And my new muff. It seemed a little much to do a post for just this! And it really doesn't go with this dress! It's grey silk satin, green silk embroidery floss leftover from a pinball (not the more proper flat silk), seed pearls couched on, and another Spoonflower miniature!

On Sleeves

Who hasn't been working on a project and had a moment where the sleeves just weren't cooperating and then wished that all clothes throughout all history had been sleeveless, chilly, goosebumpy arms and all?

As I was working on my 1780s blue silk jacket (inspired by a 1790s jacket that I own, naturally) today, I noticed something--as in all my other bodices, the sleeve cap didn't match the armscye. This didn't bother me as it's what I always do. I had tried the jacket on, and was happy with the sleeve fit, so knew the mismatching wasn't an issue.

Every fabric behaves differently. Even the same fabric behaves tends to behave differently when made into two different sleeves--it's rare that I set two sleeves exactly the same. They usually want to do something a little different! I firmly believe in close enough when it comes to patterning sleeves. Get a sleeve that pretty much fits, and fix it in the final fabric.

Now, I wish I had a slightly less messy fabric than this brocaded taffeta to demonstrate this!


You can see the shoulder strap and the sleeve cap is extending past it on the right. Initially, as I usually do, I matched the edge of the sleeve cap to the edge of the armscye edge. Then I tried it on (I recommend parallel pinning to do this!) and looked at where the sleeve bulged, and then pulled the extra fabric in.


In this picture, I'm folding the sleeve strap into its normal place.


And here's the sleeve strap folded into place. I will trim the seam allowances to match, especially since in this jacket they're going to be pressed towards the bodice and the lining will cover the raw edge!


And just another angle of the same. The strap is on top, with the top of the sleeve extending below.

I hope this is a helpful technique--I know when I started out and thought that I had to match the cap to the armscye perfectly, I had quite a bit of difficulty with sleeves. Now that I don't try for that, sleeves are no more daunting than anything else!