FirstRegency

07-28-2010 - Non-Productive Productivity

I wanted to get down to brass tacks and finish the bodiced petticoat for my Regency gown, which I'll add I'm making because I am playing Emma at the PEERS Picnic, instead of going to Costume College. (::sniffle!::)

I had the bodice part mostly assembled when I realized... I was missing a piece. A piece that was a bias strip, that I'd assumed I could just use any old bias for, right? Except nowhere did it give the length of the bias strip needed. Siiiiigh. Dig through the tissue of the pattern - I was an overachiever and bought the La Mode Bagatelle collection - and finally find it. Am totally swamped with tissue paper, and thoroughly fed up with having to dig through it every time I need a piece, so I find a handy seven-pocket folder I'd had squirreled away, and begin cutting.

I cut out everything. Like 50 pattern pieces or so.

The general categories were: bodiced petticoat, gown bodices, gown sleeves, gown skirts, spenser parts, accessories. (And a separate bit for the iron-on embroidery transfers.)

When I finished, I realized that I couldn't find the bodiced petticoat pieces that I'd cut out earlier. I had the brown paper modified pattern pieces, but not the original tissue. Cue a two hour sorting through everything in boxes, heaps, piles, and bags in, on, and around my sewing area. I got some good organization in, lemme tell you! And then, what do I find, as I move aside the workbox that I toss assorted hand tools in?

A little manila envelope, neatly labeled in my own pencil handwriting: "La Mode Bagatelle View A: Bodiced Petticoat, A-D and DD pattern pieces".

::facepalmheaddesk::

So I'm all prepped to start again in the morning, but right now I'm tired and grumpy.

07-31-2010 - In Pieces

The good thing about my fabric hoarding habit is that I tend to pick up bedsheets at thrift stores when I think they're made of something that would make nice petticoats. The bad thing is that I also keep them folded in a way that keeps cut and frayed edges hidden so they don't get worse when I shuffle things around. And so I will inevitably cut two pieces of an experimental garment out of one sheet, decide I don't like it in that fabric, carefully bundle it up and stash it away again, and then months, sometimes years later, decide to make an entire garment out of said sheet. And come up just a leeeeetle bit too short when I go to cut everything out.

Like happened last night, in fact. :P

Thankfully, I have Training(tm) in dealing with this sort of thing, so I was able to piece in a chunk of the front panel quite neatly (if I do say so myself), and I was able to make and splice bias strips to get the length of self-bias I need. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

Of course, tonight's next-step made up for it - I discovered that what I had *thought* was some icky polyester curtain sheet voile turned out to be... handkerchief linen! Holy cow! It had the exact same hand and crunchy texture of the poly cotton blends I see at JoAnn's all the time, but it washed up soft and wiggly, and it burnt up as linen. Crazysauce. So my throwaway first-attempt-at-Regency is going to have to be a bit nicer than I'd anticipated, because while I'm not going to go out and buy cheaper fabric for this, I also don't want to totally waste this stuff.

This is of course *much* better than the utter nightmare of the first fabric I chose, that I'll be making at least part of the gown from.

Cross posted to

dressdiaries08-08-2010 - First Regency: The Ten Hour Dress

When last you heard from me, I was fiddling and fussing with the La Mode Bagatelle bodiced petticoat. It took me a good long while to get it complete, and when I did, I wasn't especially happy with the results. For starters, it was insanely long, which was problematic because the pattern called for pintucks, but was also a shaped-panel skirt. I hate doing pintucks on shaped panels - they are an exercise in frustration and annoying bias-pulling. Then, the combination of work, houseguests, and cleaning up before said houseguests, ate about half of my anticipated sewing time, so I was totally stuck.

I came home from work on Friday, checked my personal email, and got down to business.

I threw the LMB pattern out the window, mostly. Which is to say, I knew what the gown needed, and I knew what general shape I wanted, but I couldn't count on having someone to button me up in back and I wasn't really thrilled with the sort of cheater-periodness of the pattern in general. So I spent a few minutes looking though my copy of Nancy Bradfield's Costume in Detail, and decided to use the pattern pieces, modify the hell out of them, and then build my own *actually bib-fronted* (instead of mock-bib) dress. Since I was flying blind, I also decided to not cut into the gorgeous vintage linen. *sniffle* That will wait for a more carefully thought out plan. This gown I made from another of the giant white damask stripe poly cotton cal-king sized bedsheets.

First, I measured my underbust to floor, and then ripped a panel out of the bottom of the sheet at that length. Skipping hemming? Yes please. And since a Cal King sheet is over 100" wide, it actually looked just about right.

I then nabbed the brown paper patterns I'd cut out for my bodiced petticoat modifications, and compared them to the pattern for the mock-bib bodice. They were a close enough match that I went and used them, though I cut the back on the fold instead of the front, and then had to remove an extra half inch to make the shoulders sit correctly. I also lengthened the front tabs, which gave me overlapping tabs to pin together, as is all period n' stuff.

I skipped out on the laborious folded self-bias neck casing, and just used some narrow premade bias. I didn't like the earlier method because it added *tons* of bulk to the front seam where the fashion fabric and lining meet, and it made it difficult to trim, and difficult to press. So instead, I just applied some bias from my stash to the neckline 1/2" in, and went on with life.

I also cut the largest size sleeves available, because I have giant biceps, and the sleeve is gathered on top back of the armsceye anyway, so I could fit it to the gown anyway needed. I think I'll do that from now on, because that was the easiest set of sleeves I've ever worked! Yes, they're a bit big, but I can fix that now that I have time.

While I was putting the gathers into the sleeves, I also sewed and ran gathers in the skirt panel. By this point, it was 2 in the morning and I was starting to get to the "too sleepy to continue" point. I drew up the skirt gathers, pinned it all on to the bottom of the bodice, took a picture and went to bed.

I woke up six hours later and began again, and since I was feeling so rushed day-of-the-event, with the dress half finished, I didn't take any further pictures. :(

I finalized the skirt gathers and sewed them down, sewed in a piece of twill tape as a waistband stabilizer, sewed in the sleeves, put a button and loop inside the bodice to close one side of the waistband, and sewed two small buttons and a loop on the outside to close the skirt. The gown's waistband actually continues a few inches past the end of the tab on the outside, so the skirting gets a nice modest overlap which is great when it starts blowing in the breeze. I'll probably add a hook and eye there later. I then cut a piece of flounce that I'd already narrow hemmed to make into petticoat ruffles, and folded under the bottom to make a casing. I took a strip of sheet, folded it to make a band, and threaded that through the casing. Pinned to the front of the bodice and tied round the waist, it makes a perfect bib.

So, here are the Day Of shots: one and two. Not great lighting as there was dappled shade, but you can see the dress, and the lovely red woolen paisley shawl I found at a thrift store. My hair didn't come out well, and I was tired and squinty, but I made it to the event only... three hours late. >_< The gown started at 7:30, and went to 2, then went from 9am to noon. So that's ten and a half hours. Pretty good! I think I may make more of these, since it went together so fast!

But today I get to reassemble the total shambles that I've made of my sewing room and bathroom. :)

A Prewashing nightmare:

This fabric was supposed to be the outer layer of my gown, instead it is a huge mess.

The fabric shrank quite a bit, but the decorative threads DID NOT. I can only imagine what must've happened to some poor unfortunate seamstress somewhere. Those are not beads, those are places where the thread doubled back and created a loop.

Pulled threads:

The fabric, preshrunk, and with the decorative threads pulled out on one side to make the rest of the fabric flat.

Fabric finally dressed:

Washed, pulled and pressed. Yeesh that took a long time.

Piece by piece:

Turns out, I didn't have enough of the sheet left to cut all the pieces of the bodiced petticoat from whole cloth. Thankfully there were enough awkward but large pieces that I could work around this.

Nobody'll see that, right?

Especially since this is just a panel in the petticoat, right?

Bias joins:

For those of you who'd like to pull this off - you cut along the straight, then put the two pieces together like the top shows. The tips should hang slightly off - this gives you seam allowance. Stitch from trough to trough to get a nice even piece when it folds out (like the one below).

Bodiced petticoat is bodiced!

Outer and lining partly pinned and ready for sewing.

(second pic, more of the same)

Nascent continuous placket

Not that I expect anyone to make heads or tails of this, but this is a continuous placket sewn into the back of the bodiced petticoat's skirt.

Bodiced petticoat: like a brick house

It fits alright. Nice and supportive.

Bodiced petticoat: fitting issues

The left shoulder strap went wonky, possibly because when I had my partner fit it on me, I mostly stood arms akimbo like you see here.

Bodiced petticoat... now with petticoat!

Gathered and attached the skirt to the bodice. It starts to look like a real garment!

Bodiced petticoat: lining and inner support

The pattern calls for grosgrain ribbon, so I used twill tape. Basically you make a self-fabric sandwich of a under bust band, and some stabilizer ribbon. I would've made it much narrower, given my druthers.

Bodiced petticoat on the form

Holy cow, it's waaaay, waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy too long, and this is with my form jacked up another 8 inches. We're talking like a foot and a half too long. Pintucks on a shaped skirt suck, so... on to plan B.

1am, Bodice

After scrapping the original plans for this gown, I ended up throwing it together from a design in my head, based on modified versions of the pattern bits I already had.

1am: here's a sleeve

Doesn't look like much. Don't know why I'm including it.

2AM: I HAVE A BODICE!

All ready for skirting, and sleeves.

Bodice with skirting

Pinned on for delirious late-night tryons.

2am tryons:

Mirror shot: can I make this work? Delirious sleep depped me says... "probably?"

Day Of: Triumph?

The wind is blowing, I'm not actually that heavy.

Day of: Full length

One bib-front Regency dress, all from a giant bedsheet!