Happy Halloween

No Halloween shall be complete without my favorite antique October accessory:

 

Sofia is visiting us again.

Sofia has only ever travelled as far as our home in Norfolk,  but she Will. Not. Stop. speaking about how any day now she’ll ride away to London, crash a ball at Devonshire House and make Lord Byron fall madly in love with her, and they will run away together to Italy, where they will cohabit in a ruined Catholic abbey and spend their nights writing epigrams and solving riddles with the ghosts of deceived nuns.

 

On Wednesday last, she tearfully pressed upon me this portrait of herself to remember her by.

I wish she’d just GO already. I swear I’ll wear the damn brooch every day if it will get Sofia and her laudanum bottle out of my second best bedroom.

 

From the Archives: Regency Flower Ballgown for Felicity

This small regency gown was put together as a rather drastic holiday from reality during my final fortnight of grad school presentations. Unsurprisingly, is an unholy mess of bad construction decisions (and no lining under that crepe silk bodice? Really?!)

It gives me enormous happiness anyway. It was FUN.

(And hey, Felicity is the least prima-donna of my AG dolls. It’s Addy who has  standards for couture. Felicity will model anything.)

A New Year Necklace

A simple stash-busting project for a bit of New Year Bling: 

 

 

16 inches of faux pearls, pear shaped crystals and matching mountings, a handful of jump rings, and a bean clasp.

 

For real elegance against the stones the pearls should be smaller, but no Napoleonic lady worth her pearls would ever quibble the SIZE of them - she’d grab those honkers, string on some amethysts and sail out into the ballroom, angling towards the candlelight as she went!

 

 

 

 

 

Ribbon Embroidered Reticule

A few weeks ago I had a rummage in my fabric stash, and I found a piece of soft peach silk dupioni. Unfolding it, I saw that at some point I'd begun embroidering wild roses. It took a bit of remembering, but eventually I worked out I'd started this piece back in High School.  That's quite a while ago now.  Why on earth had I abandoned it?

I decided I'd finish it.  Going back to the stash, I pulled out a frame, my silk ribbons, a box of silk threads -

Oh boy.  It was pretty quickly VERY clear why I'd abandoned the project the first time round. I use dupioni often for ribbon embroidery as I find that silk ribbons pass very cleanly through the fabric - far more easily than they do through a silk taffeta.
  But this particular  soft-and-supple-seeming dupioni was so tightly woven and so tough that I could hardly get a needle through it.  To drag a ribbon through it, I had to pull the needle through the fabric with a pair of pliers.

 

The mystery now wasn't why I'd abandoned the project the first time round - it was why I hadn't burned it in a fire and salted the earth afterwards.

Presumably I was as much a stubborn idiot then as I am now.  The roses were pretty. I would not waste them.I abandoned my first plan -  to unpick the rather-badly-laid-out stems and start the composition over, and instead stuck to a few simple rose leaves. 

Leaf by leaf, I dragged the thin ribbon through the blasted silk.  The resulting tension issues mean that my little rose bush is not the healthiest-looking rose bush in embroidered history - in fact I'm pretty sure some of the leaves have sawfly.
But I pressed on, swearing ineffectually, until there was a nasty snap, and only the front half of the needle came through.  Yep.  My, soft and supple silk had actually broken a tapestry needle in half.  

 

Dropping plans for any  further leaves, I tied off and threaded up the smallest needle I could get away with and started embroidering rose thorns instead.  Lots of rose thorns. This was NOT a FRIENDLY rose bush.

Once I'd wrestled the embroidery into submission, turning it into something I could show off was practically a walk in the park. I needed a regency reticule, so I made that.  

I figured out some dimensions, cut out a template, marked it up, cut it out, and stitched it up.

 

A hand-stitched drawstring channel was next.

 

Then a pair of ribbon drawstrings to match the roses, and lastly, I used up a hank of green silk thread making a set of little silk tassels for the corners.

And voila - a reticule!

 

 
The embroidery might not be perfectly accurate to the period, but it is very pretty and photogenic, and I never need to sew this AWFUL silk again.

So there.

 

 

From the Archives: Grey Silk Cape

The summer before Grad School I ran into Vogue 7923 -

-and it was VERY Jane Bennet goes to the Ball. Don’t you know.  Sort of.  Close Enough

And lo - in the stash I just happened to have a meter of silver silk duponi, and just enough pink silk for the ruffle and just enough gold to bind the edges - it was all sort of higgledy piggledy pastels that only mostly matched, but Jane Bennet would have liked that sort of thing.  (Well, she would have! Take another look at the video clip.)

When you cut on the grain, silk duponi frays like you can't imagine until you've tried it yourself.  Naturally, when I cut the ruffles I didn't leave any extra seam allowance to lose in the gathering process, and just as naturally I didn't serge or zigzag or fray check the edges or do anything else even vaguely sensible.

            Accordingly, Mum and I spent a tooth-clenching, nail biting day gathering meters and meters of half-inch ruffles very carefully and very VERY slowly. Actually, Mum, a veteran of more sewing stories than I've had breakfasts, gathered ruffles with calm and tranquility -  I did the teeth clenching and nail biting for both of us.

            At the end of that long  day I stitched the ruffles to the cloak, bound the raw edges with gold silk  and went over the whole perimeter of the cape with a pair of nail scissors hunting for stray threads - and managed to put the scissors right through the grey silk - an ugly jagged v-shaped tear.

            There might have been tears.

            And THAT foolish 'why didn't I leave it till tomorrow?' moment  is why there is a lovely embroidered flower on the edge of the hood, and only the tiniest HINT of fusible interfacing on the inside.  It's a couture touch.  Thank you VERY much, Mum. I owe you!!!!

The Historical Inspiration Festival - Part 2

Story of a Seamstress is hosting a Historical Inspiration Costume Festival.  She has kindly invited doll costumers to participate - so I'm putting up a few of my 'historically inspired' outfits!

Introducing Regency Lilly:

This small gown was put together as a rather drastic holiday from reality during my final fortnight of grad school presentations. Unsurprisingly, is an unholy mess of bad construction decisions (and no lining under that crepe bodice? Really?!) It was based on this c.1815 color plate of an EXTREMELY decorated ballgown:

The underskirt and under-sleeves are sewn from white silk charmeuse, and the overdress of lavender silk crepe.
The dress is trimmed with vintage cotton lace and bands of 7mm lavender silk ribbon.  The three-dimensional flower bouquets are made from wired silk ribbons in varied widths and colors:

A view of the wired silk ribbon bouquets on the white silk underskirt:

The back detail is composed of a sprig of wired silk ribbons and a three-color fall of 7mm silk ribbons in purple, lavender and white:

The Historical Inspiration Festival - Part 1

Story of A Seamstress is hosting a Historical Inspiration Costume Festival.  She has kindly invited doll costumers to participate - so I'm putting up a few of my 'historically inspired' outfits!


Introducing Jane:

Jane was inspired by two specific items of clothing:

Elizabeth Bennet's scrunchy bonnet from the A&E production of Pride and Prejudice

and Anne Elliot's spencer jacket from the 1995 made-for-television adaptation of Persuasion.

The dress is sewn in cotton voile, based off of the AG regency-era patterns.  The spencer jacket and bonnet I drafted myself, and sewed in silk shantung.  A small gold-and-swarovski turtle pin is fastened to the bodice of the jacket. The sleeves of the spencer are not strictly period; this was the first historical pattern that I drafted for myself - before I'd begun to study historical fashion styles.

The spencer back detailing is delicious: hematite 'buttons' fasten down a flare in the silk -

that leads into a lovely full fall of fabric in the skirt.

The bonnets is gathered along three rows of wire, pulling it in for a delightful scrunchy look.