The Black Domino

Vogue 7923 sure gets around.

Here it is in black, with a scarlet satin lining - all out of Polimoda's lovely remnant bin, to match my Venetian doctor's mask.

While I was at Polimoda I planned a Carnival costume for my AG doll.

I did my due diligence, researching comedia dell'arte costumes in the school library, and scrounging in the heavenly Polimoda remnant bins for fabrics and trim.

I made a design of my own, proceeded as far as sewing the domino - and then I left Polimoda and the rest of the costume never quite got off the ground.

Maybe one day.

The Great Blue Baroque Dress

This blue rococo-ish-gown is one of the first doll dresses I ever made.

The fabrics come from a wonderful little fabric shop in Boston's Chinatown.  They sold remnants of designer fabrics - not much, just a meter or two of each, but every remnant was a) Spectacular, b) just enough to make one really fabulous doll dress and c) Priced at genuine remnant prices - $5 or so.

One weekend I found this lovely crinkly polyester satin and a embroidered  black net and thought…huzzah!

And dashed off to the trim section of the store to pick up silver laces and trims...

The overskirt was originally intended to be a polonaise, which is why I made it so long.  I basted the net to the satin and cartridge pleated 54 inches of fabric into the waist, and we loved the look of it so completely that we couldn't bear to pull it up into loops.  It had gravitas.  And flow.

The Back:

 

The Front:

We made this dress the same summer The Patriot - Mel Gibson's Revolutionary War movie - came out.  I'd just made the dress so mum and I absolutely HAD to see the movie - I remember hugging her and both of us squee-ing with pleasure when we saw the ribbon necklaces that the ladies wore - they'd clearly based their costumes on MINE!

And I love the stomacher.  I really really love the stomacher.

And the hairpiece - although I don't have a proper photograph of it - it is an ostrich plume with a wired ribbon rosette and white feather tufts - and a vintage marcasite brooch pinned to the front.

The bodice front doesn't quite match up with the stomacher - chalk it up to early sewing experiences.  This dress has aged amazingly well - it's still one of my favorites - if not THE favorite.   It's exuberant!  All bright and colorful and joyful!

Yummy Details:

And once more, just for fun:

Silk Mitts

Naturally, now that I'd made a cape and muff I needed a pair of silk mitts to match. The muffs are made from the same white tissue taffeta as the muff casing, fused to a soft woven interfacing for stability during the embroidery. (In retrospect, it would have been more sensible to embroider 'em on a hoop before I cut them out).

For fastenings I settled on corded embroidery cotton strung through eyelets. Which meant I had to learn how to sew eyelets. 

I played with awls and embroidery floss until I had it figured enough to wing it.  The first four eyelets on the left-handed mitt were reasonably scrappy, but at number 5 the technique fell into place and if the rest aren't exactly exactly oil paintings, they are perfectly serviceable and respectable enough to hold up their heads in polite company and I am extremely proud of them!

(Yes, I know she's wearing a regency era dress.  Let's not quibble, okay?)

Green Cape and Muff(s)!!!

I'm supposed to be working on my circa.Civil war projects, but everyone in the costume blogsphere has been having such FUN at the Costume Accessories Symposium at Williamsburg  that I just - couldn't. I needed an off-day.
            And 'Clear out the stash' projects are intrinsically virtuous, right?
            And I'd been meaning to make a muff for AGES.
            And then after the blog Time Traveling in Costume went and posted that AMAZING description of the muff-making workshop, things just sort of felt as if they were MEANT.
            And if you're making a muff, you need a matching cape, right?
            Something like this?

I pulled out trusty Vogue 7923 and cut it down a little to match the dimensions of my fabric remnant - and sewed the cape out of my new green cotton velveteen -with all the wretched purple piling stripped off- with Spotlight's best gold polyester crepe for the lining (I had to go and buy that.  And then go and buy it again when the first lot seized up into matte plastic immobility when I steamed it.  Sometimes I really don't appreciate living so far from a decent fabric store!)
            For the muff - white muslin and fibrefill.
            And for the muff covering - a strip of gold silk, some 3mm silk ribbons, a few roccoco-ish pieces of trim and -

C'est voila, n'est c' pas, como no? Que piensas?

One muff wasn't nearly enough so I made another -
I really loved the one that the Time Traveler made for herself with all that rococo braid, but patterns that look lovely at full scale just don't translate to a doll 18 inches high.

So I threw out my preconceptions, dug out the silk ribbons and made this instead.

And it feels very swish indeed!

From the Archives - A hat for AG Felicity's Meet Outfit

Here's the other half of the straw purse used to make Bella's lovely ribbon-wreathed hat!
            I know that the ribbons aren't supposed to cross over the top of the hat, but they look so sweet...

The Upon Discussion, Utimately Late Victorian Accessory Set: Capelet, Hat and Purse

This rather idiosyncratic ensemble was intended as a prototype for some eighteenth century accessories - a proof of concept exercise, if you like. What came out of it wasn't  particularly successful with regard to period or, arguably, aesthetics, but as proof of concept for pattern and construction, it worked exactly as ordered.
I suppose that's damning with faint praise, but it's all I've got!

Material Details:

The fabric was a remnant of stiff salmon-colored upholstery silk.   The trim is a rococo trim from Spotlight (a bit coarse, but the colors were right) with a green variegated 7mm silk ribbon twisted around it.  Beads and feathers were from my stash.

Hat:
The hat was based on the delicious and altogether edible millinery confections from the film Marie Antoinette - like this one:

My Version:

For the hat base I used a buckram wreath form left over from a wired ribbon workshop I took 15 years ago.  (Never throw ANYTHING out.  It all comes around in the end!) The wreath form is not a perfect circle and the center hole is off center and the buckram is not very strong - even reinforced with millinery wire around the brim.  I didn't mull the hat after I wired it, so you can see the outline of the bias binding I used to wrap the edge if you look at the underside ….

            I do like the trimming.   The cockade is made of more of the silk ribbon, a few feathers and a bunch of gold-tipped stamens from my stash. (Click on the image to see larger.)

            I tea-dyed the marabou feathers  - that was fun!  I'd never tea-dyed before and had read that vinegar and salt both work to fix the dye - I decided to add both to the water - for redundancy - and my pretty ecru-colored feathers turned a spectacular neon yellow orange.

I rinsed the color out and re-dyed them, using only salt this time, and it worked beautifully.

            Unfortunately, it's a leetle too small on the doll head for the eighteenth century, but it works CHARMINGLY as a non-period-specific  accent worn on the front of the head at a fetching angle. (blurry photo warning):

Mantelet:
The mantelet was drafted from the instructions at La Couturiere Parisienne.  It was supposed to look sort of like this (a la the small girl in blue):

It came out sort of like this:

Um.  The PATTERN worked lovely.  The muslin draped very nicely, as well.  If I'd been in my right mind I might have used a fabric for the final version that draped instead of using stiff upholstery silk, and I might not have used two layers of it (what on EARTH was I thinking?), as well as adding a nice stiff taffeta lining.

            And I might have used a lace that was scale appropriate and less Edwardian.  And if I had done THAT, I might not have gotten desperate and started doing COMPLETELY misguided rococo-ish figures of eight on the back of the mantelet to distract from the trim -

            As it was, I spent a whole evening twisting and couching that ruddy trim and at the end of it all I sat back and looked at it and said - "Um…"

            Mr Tabubil had HIS face pre-set into an expression of proud approval, but he took one look and cracked.  

        "Tabubilgirl" he said gravely "what you have here is a American Girl scale Christmas Tree Skirt."

Yeah.  That figure of eight is coming right off.  I plan to redo this mantelet in blue wool - lined with white silk satin, and it will drape BEAUTIFULLY.  And I won't trim it at all.

 

Purse:

I AM unambiguously proud of the purse - I used a scrap of the leftover silk and trimmed it with green embroidery floss - couching it with small seed beads, and twisting it into cord (6 strand cord for the profile and 4 strand cord for the handle.)

            It's not rococo - it's not true anything except what felt right at the time but - embroidery floss couched with beads!  Who needs an excuse for that?!

            This set languished in the closet until mum visited a few months ago.  Despairing lightly, I brought it out to show her.  She had a good look at it and pointed out that it wasn't that bad an ensemble - I had just confused myself by thinking it was mid-eighteenth century.  If I pushed the date forward one hundred years or so - I would work just fine!

            So here are my 1870s-ish accessories.  If my AG doll was a vaguely tarty sort who worked in a saloon in Denver where Doc Holiday came in nights to play the piano and she flirted her bustle at him and sat on his lap and kissed him around a shot glass full of raw moonshine whiskey.

Rococo Fichu

One  antique lace-trimmed handkerchief, sliced in two,  one hand rolled hem and- voila!  One dolly fichu!

(I'm declaring it eighteenth century.  Yup.)