![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
slightly less disgruntled
Aug. 3rd, 2017 11:54 pmI'm STILL MIFFED THOUGH. *makes rude gesture towards Belvidere planning committee*
I got the rational dress basque-bodice mockup about half-fitted before hearing the Belvidere news, which put me out of the mood fro dealing with fiddly mockups! It's going in the right direction but I need to cut out another one to get the waist in just the right place. It's been a while since I had to really do a lot of work on a mockup so I'm out of practice with the amount of patience I need!
So, shifting gears a bit - I went back to the fancy dress costume instead. Hoop has to come first - even though I've decided (sadly) that I can't do the Hell Dress justice this go-round (maybe next time we go!), my main interest in having a fancy-dress costume at all is the totally absurd short hoops that many of the outfits have. So the hoop really has to come first!
Way back when I started planning, I was just going to cut up a cheap ebay hoop - then it got here and I realized what a truly awful shape it had, plus who really wants to wear trash bag fabric to a ball? ugh, sweaty - so then I was going to use the boning and a lot of twill tape and copy the shape of my current cage as closely as I could - and this week I decided that would require more brainpower than I wanted to use, so I decided to just make a fabric hoop skirt instead. I prefer cages in general, but this won't get a whole lot of wear, so, eh, that's alright.
I've had the Laughing Moon hoops and bustles pattern for ages, but hadn't had occasion to actually use it nor closely look at it til yesterday - and you guys, what is up with the "bell-shaped hoop", view A? It's got two steels right up on the hips! Call me crazy but that reminds me more of RenFaire than CivWar...anyway, I decidedly do not want shelf hips, and it's pretty narrow anyway, so I looked at the pattern pieces for the elliptical. But it's really too elliptical for what I have in mind, so I went back to view A, stared at it, squinted, and decided I could probably redraw a couple of lines and make it Close Enough.
So I mercilessly axed the hip bump, and ended up adding about 10" to the hem width, which I cut off at knee-level. So the circumference ends up being around 100", which is fairly close to my 108" cage, but since it's that wide up at knee-level it looks entirely ridiculous. Even more so than a regular hoop. ;) I stuck a bone in the channel at the hem as soon as I put that on, to double check this plan hadn't gone entirely awry...I think it'll be presentable. Won't have quite the nice backward thrust (ahem) of the cage, but I'll stick a bumpad in there to hold it out and call it good enough.
It's made of a vaguely ugly shade of olive green cotton broadcloth, as I had that on hand and it was one of the few fabrics I didn't pick up and instantly think, "but I want to use this for this other purpose!" (This is why I buy $1.50 fabrics when I see them, yes.) It's not especially exciting without pictures, but I promise it's not especially exciting with pictures either, at this point! Fairly busy tomorrow but maybe I'll get the rest of the twill tape channels sewn on, and then I'll get a boring picture of it.
I got the rational dress basque-bodice mockup about half-fitted before hearing the Belvidere news, which put me out of the mood fro dealing with fiddly mockups! It's going in the right direction but I need to cut out another one to get the waist in just the right place. It's been a while since I had to really do a lot of work on a mockup so I'm out of practice with the amount of patience I need!
So, shifting gears a bit - I went back to the fancy dress costume instead. Hoop has to come first - even though I've decided (sadly) that I can't do the Hell Dress justice this go-round (maybe next time we go!), my main interest in having a fancy-dress costume at all is the totally absurd short hoops that many of the outfits have. So the hoop really has to come first!
Way back when I started planning, I was just going to cut up a cheap ebay hoop - then it got here and I realized what a truly awful shape it had, plus who really wants to wear trash bag fabric to a ball? ugh, sweaty - so then I was going to use the boning and a lot of twill tape and copy the shape of my current cage as closely as I could - and this week I decided that would require more brainpower than I wanted to use, so I decided to just make a fabric hoop skirt instead. I prefer cages in general, but this won't get a whole lot of wear, so, eh, that's alright.
I've had the Laughing Moon hoops and bustles pattern for ages, but hadn't had occasion to actually use it nor closely look at it til yesterday - and you guys, what is up with the "bell-shaped hoop", view A? It's got two steels right up on the hips! Call me crazy but that reminds me more of RenFaire than CivWar...anyway, I decidedly do not want shelf hips, and it's pretty narrow anyway, so I looked at the pattern pieces for the elliptical. But it's really too elliptical for what I have in mind, so I went back to view A, stared at it, squinted, and decided I could probably redraw a couple of lines and make it Close Enough.
So I mercilessly axed the hip bump, and ended up adding about 10" to the hem width, which I cut off at knee-level. So the circumference ends up being around 100", which is fairly close to my 108" cage, but since it's that wide up at knee-level it looks entirely ridiculous. Even more so than a regular hoop. ;) I stuck a bone in the channel at the hem as soon as I put that on, to double check this plan hadn't gone entirely awry...I think it'll be presentable. Won't have quite the nice backward thrust (ahem) of the cage, but I'll stick a bumpad in there to hold it out and call it good enough.
It's made of a vaguely ugly shade of olive green cotton broadcloth, as I had that on hand and it was one of the few fabrics I didn't pick up and instantly think, "but I want to use this for this other purpose!" (This is why I buy $1.50 fabrics when I see them, yes.) It's not especially exciting without pictures, but I promise it's not especially exciting with pictures either, at this point! Fairly busy tomorrow but maybe I'll get the rest of the twill tape channels sewn on, and then I'll get a boring picture of it.
