Is that a light?

So here is the red dress as it stood on Monday, sleeveless and after I fitted my model...too big!  But I had kind of guessed that, I knew it looked too big for her!  I ended up taking both and the sides of the coat in.

Which made it look more like this.  Muuuuch better.  Those are the lower tie on sleeves and the gators hanging off the side of my judy there, if you were wondering.

  A close up of the lower sleeves, just to say, I have no grommets left.  And I have no grommet machine  just a hand grommet tool that is probably ment for scrap-bookers, but you know what?  Aside from the hand cramps it eventually causes, it works amazingly well!

This is where it stands tonight, It has sleeves (finally) and the ascot is made.  Those sleeves were... interesting.  I made them by steam-a-seaming two pieces of faux suede together.  Now Faux suede is a wonderful forgiving fabric when not layered with glue...but once glued it became as tough and strong/thick as real suede. I broke...3 leather needles?  Sounds about right.

  My kind and wonderful mother sewed all the buttons on the gators for me, and when I was horrified by how RED it all was, went out and found some black trim to sew over my seams and then proceeded to sew the trim on for me.

I made an ascot (you can just see it poking out around the neck, and some detachable fancy cuffs to pin onto the white blouse my model will be wearing under everything.

All that is left is attaching the lining, hemming the coat and finishing the edges/putting in the elastic into the cuffs.  I can almost see a light at the end of this very red tunnel!

That's a loooooooooot of patterns.

The pile of patterns for my red dress. It seems like a ton, but there are basic blocks, sleeves and pants patterns on that same hook, which were later turned into Princess seams (then Jackets) shirts, and pants.

Now to start sewing! WOO!


...Actually, I have to cut out everything first. THE SEWING!

Lets start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

The mock ups for the top and pants of my soon to be red dress outfit.  I fit her last monday (the model) it all fit really well!  I just had to take in the seams along the bust a tiny bit and along the back a bit as well.

After an afternoon of working I had the patterns for the actual coat!

The back

And the front.

Now it is onto making sleeves for the coat, taking in the pants and making the shirt for underneath the coat!

Lucky for me the gators I made for my grad piece last year (black boot looking things) fit her perfect so I can just use the patterns for them!  Woo!

Edit: Pants are drafted! WOO!

Field trip! (sorta)

My mother volunteers at a local living museum (where I worked for 6 awesome summers) called kings landing.  She volunteers in their collections building accessioning (marking and registering) donated and purchased pieces for the museums collection.

So anyway, the most recent collection she was assigned involved some historical garments, which she was waiting to work on till I had a day off.

Well that day was today!

So enjoy some neat pictures of clothes from the 1830's to the 1890's and maybe beyond!  I know I loved getting to look them over.


So this is the first one she pulled out, it is truquiose blue (my flash washed it out bigtime) with wine red velvet piping.  This is the sleeve cuff.

 How to finish edges before the invention of the surger version 1: Bind them with seam binding.

 The other version (which I thought I got a picture of, but didn't apparently) was to whip-stitch the edges to prevent fraying.

Turns out this was made next door!

 And here is the back and the actual colour of the coat.  Pretty vibrant for being so old!

French fashion, straight from Paris:

That is a lot of hand work work...

 Wayyy too frou-frou for my tastes, but still beautiful.

Whoops....either someone forgot to finish this detail on the skirt or...I'm not sure what happened.

 A close up of the unfinished party, you an see the pattern for where they were meant to sew that woven ribbon.

And down on the bottom, apparently shoddy manufacturing isn't a new issue...

 This is what it was supposed to look like!

This is more my taste. I like the simpler fashions. I also liked how the buttons go off on an angle here (hard to tell in this shot).

The back flap to go over that bustle.

Over the Judy so the bustle bit could hang better.

The slanted buttons at the bottom are a bit easier to see on the Judy. Sadly, the Judy was too big for this coat.

This one (which I loved) was just able to fit over the Judy   It's in three parts: a separate skirt and bodice and collar. The bodice hooked under the skirt to hold it on, and closed up the back in a centered opening.  The really cool part was the lace on the back was separate and hooked onto the shoulder and side seam to cover up the back closure.

This is a detail shot of the lace and mesh work on the bodice, it's like modern crinoline but so much less scratchy and polyester.

The back with it's train.

 And the collar which hooked onto the bodice with hook and eyes.

I realized when we took it off, I had it on backwards...dang.  That high part should have been in back. :/

The entire dress was a lacy overlay over purple silk (maybe?)  The skirt was in much better shape then the bodice which was slashed with age.

  It's just so PRETTY!

A shot of the front with its detail.

 The sleeve.

This was an unfinished skirt, it was huge, leading me to believe it might have been for over a hoop skirt or ment to later be pleated in.

All of the embroidered details were hand appliqued to the dress.  This one was over a seam to hide the line.

The white lines seen here actually the seam biding on the inside seams, the center of a few of the apliques were lace and therefore see through.

 This top, was probably one of the oldest, but it looked brand new.

 Back in the short waisted, hoop skirt era....

Last one:
This one only had the coat and an over skirt.

I love the eyeball buttons....

It looks like their is a pocket...but there isn't.

 Again, too skinny for the Judy...

The sleeve cuff.

The back of the over skirt.

With a butt-bow that would make a Sailor Moon character jealous.

The actual colour of the garment.

The buttons are watching you:

The end!