Simplicity 3809: All dressed up and no where to go

Well, I almost finished my new pirate costume in time for the last weekend of Sherwood Forest--which was this weekend. Pretty good considering I started it on a Saturday and took a day off of work to try and finish it. Instead, I wore my trusty red and brown outfit that I've worn to the last three Renaissance festivals including the one this past weekend.

Melissa is so gorgeous! Why can't I be gorgeous too!

I do think my back view is rather nice though. :-)

Back to the new pirate costume: I pushed myself too hard. I know better than to do that, but I did it anyway. I had a complete meltdown on Friday night after it took me a stupid hour and a half to put the trim on the chemise sleeves, and then had to take my dog out again, and then came back at 8:45 and the thought of installing the grommets on the bodice was too much, because I can't pound grommets at my apartment since I live on the third floor, so I would have had to pack everything up including Lulu and schlep it over to Kenneth's first-floor apartment to deal with the grommets with Lulu horsing around and me in a terrible mood.

I used a burgundy poly-silk blend duvet that I'd bought a couple of years ago for my stash. It took me all day to cut the pieces of the bodice out on Saturday. There are four pieces for each side of the bodice, and you have to cut interlining and lining for each one, so it was a marathon of pinning pattern pieces to fabric, cutting fabric out, unpinning pattern pieces from fabric and pinning them to different fabric, rinse, and repeat. It was so tedious.

The silk is a changeable silk, which is burgundy but shines black in certain lights. I cried a bucket of tears Saturday night when I got ready to start sewing the pieces together, because one of them shined burgundy and the other shined blackish-burgundy in my crappy light, and I thought somehow I'd folded the fabric wrong and cut two clones of each pattern piece rather than mirror images. Does that make sense?

The duvet...

See how the piece on the left is a different shade than the piece on the right? I thought I'd totally screwed up.

In the morning I realized it was all okay, that you can't fold fabric wrong in such a way that one piece will be right side up and the other will be wrong side up. But my meltdown did result in a fun conversation with my downstairs neighbor, who was sitting on the steps outside while her dog pooped. She is a creative person too and we had a lot of fun talking about project fails and trials and tribulations and the whole creative process, and in the end we were both laughing.

Well, here are some pics of milady wearing the almost finished outfit (sans grommets in the bodice).

Look at how well I matched the seamlines of the front and back pieces!

It turned out nicely, despite my meltdown. I am really proud of my craftsmanship on this outfit, except for the chemise for reasons which will be obvious when you see the picture. I'm not sure I ever want to work with sheer handkerchief weight linen again. It was a nightmare--it stretched out way too easily even on the grain, kept snagging in my scissors and I even bought new scissors to cut it. Snagged in the machine, though I changed my needle to an extra fine needle. My friend Kristine kindly gathered the bodice to the yoke for me after I tried twice and the thread broke on me or came loose both times. I've never had that happen before, even when gathering lots of yardage of heavier weight fabric.

So Kristine gathered the chemise to the yoke, and then I attached the facing to the yoke and cut the slit in the front and... I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The edges of the split yoke got stretched as I was stitching them...

...and in a spectacularly glaring fail, the points of the split and the yoke don't match up.

But in the end, I just didn't like it. I'm glad I didn't buy fabric for it. I decided I'd go for more of a musketeer look, but now that I've (almost) finished it, I think the bodice is wrong for musketeer.

I'm glad I decided not to trim the skirt. I still plan to use it in a musketeer costume. I just have to find a good pattern for the bodice or jacket that I will pair with it. It's not a total loss. It's just the bodice I ended up not liking. 

In conclusion:

The Challenge: Make a new pirate/musketeer costume

Fabric: Chemise - handkerchief-weight linen swag from Goodwill Outlet; bodice and skirt - poly-silk blend duvet from Goodwill

Pattern: Simplicity 3809 for bodice and skirt, vintage McCall's 6359 for chemise.

Notions: Gutermann thread, cable ties for boning, zipper, lace trim for bodice and chemise.

Hours to complete: Three full days and four evenings after work before meltdown stopped project on the brink of completion.

Total cost: Duvet: $7.99; Trim: 10 yds gold Venice lace, $27.00, lace trim for chemise, $13.00. Notions: gold thread, burgundy thread, and zipper, $9.00, cable ties for bodice boning, $2.75. Pattern: $1.00. Total cost was around $60.00. It's amazing how much more expensive it is when you add trim.

Fits of rage: At least one per day of work on this project. However, I just swore and cursed up a storm to get myself through them, rather than throwing the project into a crumpled heap in the corner. Two complete meltdowns complete with ugly sobbing and dog licking tears away from face.

Was it worth it: Yes, because it takes a long time to get good at sewing and everything I make is a chance to improve my craftsmanship and a step towards getting better. Not crazy about the money I had to spend on trim and notions, but that's part of it. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. I'm extra glad that I didn't buy fabric for this project. The project is still salvageable because I really like the skirt. I don't know what I'm going to do with all that leftover Venice lace trim though!

I might make a skirt to go with the bodice, and finish the bodice up, and try to sell it in my etsy store to help recoup the costs of this project. 

New Renaissance fest costume in the works

How do the days pass so quickly? It seems like just yesterday I decided to make a new pirate costume for the Renaissance fest, but it must have been more like 3 weeks ago. I've been thinking about it and planning and thinking about it and stressing and thinking about it and suddenly I realized this weekend that I only had about two weeks left to make the following:

Corset
Chemise
Bodice
Skirt
Underskirt

To this end, I ordered a bunch of lovely 100% cotton jacquard fabrics from FabricMart.com for just $3.50 a yard! I will post about these later. But in a stunningly practical move, I am not using any of them in my costume. I feel really stressed out whenever I spend more than $50 at a time, but they had a 20% off coupon for first-time shoppers so I got 25 yards of fabric for just $78.00 and that includes the shipping. And I mean, the price was unbeatable.

I made am making my corset from a vintage tablecloth that my lovely friend Kristine gave me. It's pale yellow and is printed with dogwoods, so it already has two of my favorite things going for it. It's a tight weave, so I can use it in a single-layer corset.

I think it's darling. I am using Simplicity 2890, which I picked up at Joann's for $1.00. The corset was designed by fashion historian Kay Gnagey and I have actually worn one of her corsets a few times and loved it. It's my ideal corset. Originally this was going to be a practice piece but I decided to just make it all the way because a) I am too lazy to fit a corset properly to my figure, b) my figure is pretty much made for Victorian/Civil War era corsets, being an hourglass shape, proportionate boobs to hips, and short-waisted, and c) I don't have time to make another one before the Ren fest.

This was my first time inserting gussets into anything, and it could have been a rage-fest but I found this wonderful tutorial before I ever started, and that made everything a breeze. That being said, I forgot to do a 5/8" seam allowance, doing a 3/8" instead, so the bust is too big. I don't really care right now.

I'm still trying to decide if I'll use 1/4" zip ties for the boning or order steel boning. Steel boning isn't really that much more expensive than zip ties. It's the corset busk that's kind of expensive--and that damn shipping--so I might as well just get proper boning. I need to make a decision soon.

I almost ordered all that stuff this weekend but then froze with indecision because, in my usual can't-do-anything-in-moderation fashion, I thought as long as I'm ordering boning for one corset, why not order boning for FOUR CORSETS??? The shipping will be the same, and I want to make this corset again, and I have another Simplicity corset pattern I want to try, and since that other one looks easy maybe I should just make TWO of it also!?!?!?!

Moving on, I am using a 1970s dress pattern for the chemise/blouse. I get a lot of my patterns at my favorite thrift store, and they come 2-3 in a package. So for every one that I buy, I get two extras that are usually not something I'm interested in. I've been listing those extra patterns on my Etsy store, but there are a handful that I have put in the "No Redeeming Qualities" category destined for my trashcan. This was one of them. But juuuuuust as I was about to throw it out, View A suddenly struck me as an AWESOME lady pirate blouse.

Look at it.

LOOK AT IT.

I am going to use a sheer linen swag that my friend Melissa found for me at the Goodwill outlet last year. I should probably save it for something more important than a pirate chemise, but I'm trying to save money where I can. What's the point of having a fabric stash if you don't use it?

I'm going set the elastic slightly higher on the sleeve and then trim the cuff which white lace bordered with gold lace at the top, like so:

For the bodice and skirt, I'm going to use this Simplicity 3809, View A. I originally had grand plans to make an underskirt out of some of the white cotton jacquard I got from FabricMart, and make a bustled overskirt from the Janet Arnold book, which would have meant rescaling the pattern and being amazingly talented. But for the sake of simplicity (hahahaha), and lack of time, I'm just going to have to settle for a Big Four pattern. But it will still be cute!!

I am pissed off at Joann's for having their linen fabrics 30% off for the past two weeks at least, which means I can't use any of the 50% off coupons I've had. Assholes. I really don't want to spend $45 on fabric if I can avoid it. So after much stress and fuming, I've decided to dye my dark brown linen skirt from my previous Ren fest outfit black. And to make the bodice from a jacquard tablecloth I've had squirreled away and dye that black to match.

I spent 8 hours online yesterday picking out gold Venice lace trims for this outfit, only to realize that if I trimmed it like I wanted to, I'd end up spending some $50-$60 on lace. I can't afford that right now. So after all that, I just got 10 yards of one type of lace and I guess I'll be spending about $27 which includes the shipping, which is nice and cheap as far as that kind of thing goes.

Now I just need to stop thinking about stuff and actually do something about it.