Simplicity 3809 - A cautionary tale, or Why you should always make a muslin

One of my friend's finally helped me to shape my dress form to my figure, so I thought I'd dress it up with my last pirate costume, Simplicity 3809 (which I never wore). I put the grommets in the bodice this weekend just so it wouldn't be a UFO.

Simplicity 3809 was a great pattern. Very easy to make, but very time consuming to construct because you have to cut the bodice pattern in triplicate (fashion fabric, interlining, lining). The instructions were very clear and I had no problem following them. It may have helped that I've sewn princess-seamed bodices before--my favorite sundress pattern is New Look 6457, which has a fitted bodice. I've made up that pattern five times!

Other reviewers have also praised this pattern, but have noted that the shoulder straps are too long. They're right about that. The shoulder straps overlapped by a couple of inches on my bodice. Since they are supposed to be set with grommets and held together with a ribbon, this would be a problem.

I'd like to note that one blogger who made this pattern stated that there was a mistake in the instructions, because Simplicity said to cut out three panels for the skirt. She said you only need to cut out two. She is mistaken though, because if you cut out only two panels for the skirt, you don't have the fullness to make this skirt look right. It just looks cheap and flimsy if you only cut out two panels for the skirt. So please follow the instructions as given with the pattern.

Here's how it worked out for me. It looks fine, I suppose. I just pushed myself too hard to finish it and ended up hating it. It also doesn't look like a pirate or musketeer outfit like I'd envisioned.

Looking good so far! But...

Shiiiiiit...

 Sigh. Damn it. I'm assuming the neckline got stretched out in the back. I swear I stay-stitched every piece, so I don't know how this happened. But it tends to happen to me a lot when I'm sewing things--usually it's on a V-neck. Anyway, there's no way to reverse engineer this to fix it without it being obvious.

And the back waist is too long. I'm very short waisted. The bodice fits perfectly in the front, so I didn't expect it to be too long in the back, but there you have it. There's also no fix for this that doesn't involve taking apart the bodice, and I don't love this enough to do that. It would have looked so much better if I'd shortened the back waist, which I would have known I needed to do IF I'D JUST MADE A MUSLIN FIRST.

I'm totally bummed that I spent so much money on the trim for this costume, but that's the way it goes sometimes. Maybe I can use it on an 18th century riding habit. If I'm going to spend this much time and effort on costumes, I'm going to start using historical patterns.

The skirt on this pattern is awesome and it looks so nice made up in this burgundy poly-silk fabric.

I'm really glad I didn't trim the skirt. I can use it for something else. I have a beautiful golden-tan cotton tapestry fabric with floral trim in pinks and burgundies, and I think it would look amazing made up into a curaco jacket and paired with this skirt. The skirt isn't made in a historically accurate fashion, but it will do for a Renaissance festival and at least it won't go to waste.

Mystery skirts: Part the second - Drawnwork embroidery on Mystery Skirt 1?

I was thrilled when Isabella of All the Pretty Dresses commented on my post about the mystery skirts. Isabella is an expert historical costumer and I've probably learned more about 19th century clothing from her blog than anywhere else.

Isabella thinks Mystery Skirt #1 might be from the teens, but there's a chance it could be a 1970s Edwardian revival piece. She needed more pics to really be able to assess it, so I unpinned the skirt this weekend and took lots of pictures.

I never seem to notice small details of anything until I'm photographing it. As I was taking pictures of the lace details on this skirt panel, I started to notice how the threads of the lace were actually part of the fabric of the skirt. I believe this lace is actually drawnwork embroidery and I think it was done by hand.

These pictures were taken of the front of the skirt.

Here is a full-length view of the skirt with the pleats unpinned.

Detail of one of the side pieces of embroidery.

Detail of center panel of embroidery.

Embroidery along the hem.

This next series of pictures are from the back of the skirt.

Hem from the back of the skirt. It's come undone by the selvedge.

Embroidery of the main panel from the back.

A bit of the side pieces of embroidery from the back.

A little more detail from the main panel of embroidery.

Isabella, I hope these pictures are more helpful than the ones I included in my previous post. I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on this. :-)

Mystery skirts

I found a couple of very interesting skirts at the City Wide Garage Sale recently. I thought I knew what their general time period was, but now I'm not so sure.

I know this blog doesn't have much of an audience, but if any of my three followers knows someone who knows about historical clothing and can show them the following pictures to help me date these skirts, I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER.

SKIRT 1

Skirt 1

I found Skirt 1 in a pile of "small, mixed linens" at a vendor who sells linens by the pound. It's actually a skirt panel. I'm certain that it's a skirt because there's a little notch in the center front and creases from pleats that had been picked out at some point.

Pleat creases.

Repinning the original pleats.

All pleats repinned.

The selvedge edges are preserved and it measures 29" wide.

I can't find a whole lot of info on historical fabric widths. I know that fabric came in a standard 36" width for a very long time, at least from the 1920s-1960s. I found a vendor of antique fabric online and most of her turn of the century fabrics are 29" wide.

I thought this style of skirt was Edwardian, with the lace insets. But I don't think this lace is considered insertion lace.

Lace inset on Skirt 1.

And the Edwardian summer dresses with the beautiful insertion lace are usually made of lawn, and this fabric is a sturdy twill-like fabric.

I'd like to restore this skirt panel as a fully functional skirt to be part of a historical costume, but I just can't seem to find anything quite like it, so I'm not sure what time frame to put it in.

SKIRT 2 

Skirt 2 is a silk chiffon number with a stunning panel of lace down one side. What kind of lace is this? Is it Venice lace? I know nothing except that I love it. 

There are traces of black net that once backed the lace. I didn't see any traces of this black net anywhere else on the skirt (i.e. at the waistband). 

The lace sash is mounted on a silk panel with the center cut out, and then attached to the waistband. It's not tacked down on the skirt. There is a silk panel behind the lace sash that is sewn as part of the skirt. 

The chiffon skirt is gathered and mounted on a silk waistband that fastens with hooks and eyes at the side. 

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm wondering--what side were skirts usually fastened in the "old days"? Could the skirt actually close in the back, with the lace sash hanging down the center front instead of the side? 

As you can see, the silk hem along the border is completely shattered. It's as brittle as old paper and crumbles if you even look at it. The same can be said for the silk panel behind the lace sash. Interestingly, the silk fabric of the waistband and the sash and the chiffon of the skirt are in excellent condition. 

I'd love to be able to recreate this skirt using that beautiful lace sash and make a whole outfit from it. 

When I saw this skirt I immediately thought "flapper skirt!!" but... This would be part of an evening ensemble, wouldn't it? I don't think separates were worn very much in the 20s, at least not in evening wear. Could this be from the teens?  Am I anywhere close to the ballpark in guessing its age?

Gratuitous pictures of my dog

I love my dog. I love her SO MUCH!! She is spirited and sometimes willful and pushy, sweet, funny, loving, affectionate, smart, beautiful, unusual looking, and above all, HAPPY.

She's changed my life in such a positive way since I first got her on August 1, 2012. I used to be shy and feel very awkward around people, but with Lulu, I immediately have something to talk about with the people I meet. People will often initiate conversations with me about her, but incredibly, if I have Lulu with me, I find myself chatting people up ALL THE TIME without even thinking about it!

I've made friends since I've had her and hang out with them regularly at the dog park and really truly enjoy their company. I almost never feel like, "Oh, god, when can I go home?" I get an hour to an hour and a half of exercise every day because Lulu likes her walks and keeps me on a pretty strict schedule. If it wasn't for her, I doubt I'd get much exercise at all because it's too cold in the winter, too windy in the spring, too hot in the summer... And I hate working out in a gym.

Lulu sleeps with me at night and cuddles with me in the mornings, she licks the tears off my face when I'm having a meltdown, she comes to check on me every time I swear. She brings me her toys when I'm sitting on the couch, not so that I'll toss them for her, but simply because she seems to want me to have them, like she enjoys her toys so much and wants me to experience how awesome they are too. She melts my heart when she brushes her nose with her paws and looks at me with puppy eyes when she's feeling utterly content and happy, and makes me laugh when she does her "pretzel puppy" routine (rubbing her face and body along the bed or the couch, and then lays sideways on her face with her rump sticking straight up in the air and looking at me with wild eyes and doing that excited panting that dogs do).

In conclusion, I love and am in love with my dog. She turned two years old on April 10, and to celebrate, I took her to work to take pictures of her in the bluebonnets. Here are a few of my favorite.

She's got a beautiful build. So streamlined and elegant. I love to watch her run.

Someone stopped us in PetSmart one day and said, "She should be on TV!" And I thought... WHERE CAN I FIND AN AGENT

This one is my favorite!

Always staring off into the distance, looking for something to chase.

Don't eat the bluebonnets!

My pretty girl.

I think she has a noble profile.

"Time to go home and get a trea-- Look, BIRDS!!"

I think we can all agree that she's the cutest dog in the world. :-)

Edwardian corset finally finished!!!

This weekend I finally finished my Edwardian corset!! I didn't end up using any of my antique lace because I didn't have enough of the Irish crochet lace (it was about half an inch too short to go across the top), but I found this cream-colored pleated lace at Hobby Lobby and immediately knew it would be perfect.

I'm very happy with the way it looks on me, though I did learn a few things in the process of trying to tighten the laces by myself.

1. I only set every other grommet, except for at the waist. When I was tightening the corset, the edges of the lacing strips bowed out around the curve between my waist and hip. I think I now know why the grommets are so closely spaced on the pattern--because it helps the distribute the tension on those areas more evenly.

Now, this could be because I couldn't tighten it evenly from top to bottom, but I really think I need to go back and put more grommets in. I'm thinking this shouldn't be a problem, I'll just undo the stitching on the bias binding on the bottom, take out those two bones on either side of the grommets, and stick a few more in there.

2. If you lace the corset to have those loops on either side of the waist, you really can't tighten the corset yourself because there's no way to hold the loops and tighten at the same time.

3. If you've torn your rotator cuff in the last six months and are trying not to put too much stress on the joint so that it can heal, trying to tighten a corset by yourself is a really good way to aggravate the injury. My shoulder had been feeling almost all better, and I've screwed it up again because I couldn't wait to try the corset on. But what can I do, since I don't have anyone to help me. My ex said he would have helped me, but I think that would be weird.

So I only have a few pics from the front, since I couldn't lace the back properly. Like I said, I'm really happy with how it looks. I was afraid I would look like a chunky sausage in this thing.

The underbust and waist fit quite well. I'm not sure if I'll be able to maintain parallel edges of the lacing strips all the way down though. I just can't get a feel for how it will fit over my hips when it's laced properly.

I can see that this style of corset isn't meant for waist training or creating any kind of an hourglass figure. It's meant to create a columnar silhouette for those long, lean styles of the 1910s-onward.

I think it's very interesting that girdles in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s kept the same form as the Edwardian corset. I'd kind of like to experiment with making some girdles of my own because I like that kind of thing and I have a problem with getting very bloated sometimes--I can never predict when--and I have to wear loose clothes all the time because of that. I would love to have a corset/girdle to wear under my work clothes so that I don't have to worry about looking okay in my dress in the morning, only to appear to be 5 months pregnant later in the afternoon because my GI tract is so touchy.

Too much information? I'm sorry. But, it is a problem that a lot of women have.

Anyway, yay for my first REAL corset being finished!!

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.