Fire And Ice - Part I

Yesterday evening I was handed an invitation to a birthday party with a theme: Fire and Ice.

There's not much that's gold or white in my red-desert wardrobe, and I'm not one to dance all night dressed up in a pasteboard sun or a ski suit, and I'm up to my ears sewing presents for new babies of good friends, so I reckoned that I'd go to spotlight, pick up some shimmery white bits of fabric and a white wig and tart up a pair of jeans and a shirt to look like I was covered in frost.

            But THEN - I remembered the BALLGOWN.

            About a year ago, I ducked into the local thrift store looking for brass buttons and had an unexpected WOW moment - a very tall and very plump person had made herself an A-line ballgown skirt and scoop-necked blouse out of scarlet silk duponi - and donated it to the thrift store, who had priced it $5.

            I love this shop. I have an unexpected WOW moment there at least once a month.

So I pulled it out of the stash and cut it up and started draping it on Sally and - I think that this is it.

It's very Schiaparelli, isn't it? With the bustle and the pouter-pigeon front?

The flowery bits are the leftover scraps of silk roughly ruffled into flowers - I'll interleave them with gold scraps - all shreddy on the edges. 

            There's only one little hitch - the party is on SATURDAY.

            But I think I can pull it off.

It took half an hour to cut up the skirt and an hour to drape the dress. And it's DOABLE, If I don't care too much about the inside finishes, which I don't.

 

Schedule:

 

Tuesday - finish the damn elephants and sew up the red apron front.

Wednesday -  have Mr Tabubil help me pin up the bodice - and then sew it.

Thursday - Sew the bustle skirt back, and sew the apron front and the bustle back to the waistband of the original skirt.

Friday - Make the underskirt - which involves all of  one french seam to turn the gold into a cylinder, a rough hem (I wonder if I can leave a train at the back - or will I just rip it to shreds?) and three or four layers of stiff cream-colored net (a la Spotlight!) attached to an elastic waist band.

And maybe a bustle pad - we'll see. I rather like it the way it is, all flat and Schiaparelli 1939.

Then, lastly - use all the silk scraps to make ruffle-roses (predominantly red, with only touches of fraying gold poking out) to hide where I've had to shorten the waistband, and to tart up the rather dull neckline.

Currently the bodice is pinned so that the excess fabric flares out as panels on the outside. Should I seam them out or should I leave them like they are - to add a bit of fun?

Happily, the red silk over-skirt is exactly the same as the one I'd planned for my very-on-hold steampunk outfit, so on THAT, I'm getting back in the game. I started making the steampunk outfit 13 months ago, but tried to fake the 1880s with an A-line Vogue skirt pattern - and screwed up the corded petticoat and blue pinstripe underskirt so thoroughly that Mr Tabubil had a major giggle fit and sent me out to buy an actual pattern, which i did, but I'd sort of used up all my motivation, and the fabric migrated to the bottom of the stash, where it could live forever, I thought.

I may be wrong!