mandie_rw | Entries tagged with squiggle print 1800 outfit

Well, sort of. Maybe. At least think very hard about sewing all the things? As I mentioned in my last post, I think, I'm feeling creative (it's a nice feeling!), and this is perfect timing, in the few weeks between "summer classes are winding down" and "time to start fall classes again!"

And as we know, I'm not one of those nice efficient people who can work steadily on one project from start to finish; I have to have a bunch of them going at the same time so I can bounce around! Currently in the workbasket:

- Late 1790s-1800 squiggle print outfit. The one to go over those new transitional stays! The one I sewed the petticoat skirt panels for in, like, March, and then wandered away. I don't have an event for it, but soft goal is to finish it in time for early fall, as there's a local historic farmhouse (that's no longer a farm, of course, but has a big community garden and apple trees) I want to take pictures at before everything dies off. I finished the petticoat over the weekend, except for hooks & bars on the bodice, which I want to suit up for and then work on a mockup for the short gown bodice, so as not to waste a suiting-up! This will require a solid chunk of sewing time that I haven't managed to set aside yet. Possibly tomorrow or at least Thursday, I think I can manage that.

- 1780s "Augusta" stays. I was hemming and hawing over what, if anything, to make for a 1780s-90s/ chemise gown event at the end of September - I vaguely had Ideas of making the black 1790s round gown I've wanted for a few years and have fabric for, but after some discussion with the hostess it seems it's mostly going to be white gowns. I already have a white chemise gown and feel no need to make another one, as they're nice but not my Favorite Thing Ever, so I can focus on accessories. And, er, stays are accessories, right? Well...I could use a new pair of 1780s stays - my old ones are still wearable but they are very old (2009 or so? yikes), and I bought the Augusta stays pattern a while back with the intention of eventually replacing those elderly ones. Now seems like a good time...especially since if I don't finish the new stays in time I can still wear the old ones (or my newer green linen 1770s stays, for that matter)!

I'm trying to be good and use materials I have on hand, so I'm using a piece of "cimarron" taffeta from the scrap bin for the outside, and am dismembering a (different) very old pair of stays for the cable ties. After having switched over to German plastic whalebone as my default boning a few years back, cable ties look pretty clunky to me now for visible boning channels, but...it's available and free? I tried splitting one tie in half, which makes for a much nicer, narrower width, but...cable ties are very resistant to being cut vertically! Not practicable for boning an entire pair of stays! So I'll just resign myself to relatively clunky channels, it's fine. I may have to buy something for the binding anyway, as I want something nicer than chamois, and do want to actually bind rather than doing that whole turn-the-edges-in thing. Will have to decide soon; if I need to order something I should do it within the next week or so.

- Dirndl(s). And now I, somewhat randomly, have a new obsession with German tracht, or folk costume, specifically the dirndl. Background to this: my maternal grandmother's family was all early-20thc-German immigrants (not uncommon in Northeastern cities!), so when I was a kid we usually went to the Labor Day weekend Cannstatter Volksfest Verein at a big German club in Philly. And you will be shocked to know I always wanted a dirndl, as many many people dressed in tracht, and more than one booth had racks of it for sale! They're expensive, though, so I never got one. Years passed, we mostly stopped going, but this year my sister and mom want to go again (Covid willing, of course), and it finally occurred to me that I now have the skills to make my own damn dirndl!

Oh, right, I sew, that's a thing.

I did some initial Pinterest/Google research - just enough to find that any actual historical/ specifically regional dirndl research is in German and therefore out of my league...but as a folk costume that's evolved into both an actual if niche/regional fashion and a "sexy Oktoberfest barmaid" costume, I can make whatever the hell I want and it doesn't have to be "historically accurate"!

Still not using a zipper, though. Zippers suck.

So, this is the project with my first "due date" - Labor Day weekend. I'm being good with my stays project, therefore I'm allowed to be bad with my dirndl project (fabric hoarder logic). Plus I have a nice wool I could use, but...I want to practice with a less-nice cotton print, and I really don't have many of those. So I ordered some quilting prints from fabric.com this morning! At least the nice thing about dirndl is that the bodice and skirt and apron are all separate pieces that don't have to be made of the same fabric although they can be. At least, they were separate pieces originally; more of the ready-made dirndl are constructed as a dress (which makes sense for off the rack purchases, but hi I'm making this custom-fit, plus making separates will make it more versatile!). So dirndl fixin's are all ordered, including a pattern because why reinvent the wheel when it comes to a bodice...and I'll work on that when it gets here.

Current Mood: good

Looking through all the (manymanymany) pictures from the weekend apparently put me in the mood for late 1790s/ working class. Probably because the Saturday pictures of me in 1790s are way more flattering than Sunday's turn-of-the-century (combination of boater that I really don't like the proportions of on my own head, lame-ass hair, fugly natural form shirtwaist, and limp skirt makes for a resoundingly dumpy outfit!), and because I loved both Robin's new Regency short gown and her "Marilla Cuthbert" 1900s outfit - that's the "everyday clothing" I so enjoy!

So with my free time before I went back to school on Wednesday, and then last night and today, I managed to (probably) finish the transitional "lower sorts" late 18thc stays, that I started, um, back in March? They just needed the basting taken out and have the last two seams sewn for real, bind the edges, and make/ attach the shoulder straps.

I say they're probably finished, because I was pretty wildly guessing at the exact length of these - the pair in Regency Women's Dress I based them on was neither my size nor my proportions, and my shot in the dark ended up with a longer-than-intended center front. I could take off the binding, cut them shorter, make another eyelet, and rebind, but...after having worn them around all afternoon and most of the evening, I can say I probably won't! They fit perfectly fine, even if they're a little on the long side for short stays - I'm pretty long-waisted! And transitional stays really do run the gamut of shape and style, so it's perfectly plausible a working class woman would be wearing longer stays into the new century. Probably. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. ;)

Goal for tomorrow is to get some pics of the stays (that are over a shift, not a ratty t-shirt, ahem) and either write a blog post on it, or keep sewing the petticoat bodice of the squiggle print dress, whichever I'm more inspired to do. I thought about making a mockup of said petticoat bodice today after I'd finished the stays...then realized I already have a mid-1790s petticoat with a bodice, why reinvent the wheel, as long as it fits with these stays?

Pro: it did fit with these stays.
Con: apparently I didn't make/ keep a paper pattern when I made the petticoat, so I had to take a pattern off my own damn petticoat bodice, derp.

So that took a leeeetle bit longer than if Past Me had been efficient! But as long as nothing weird happened in the process of pattern-making and sewing, I should probably be able to make up the bodice this weekend and finish the petticoat this week. We shall see.

Current Mood: good

A Saturday when I have no obligations to anyone or anything, and can spend my entire day doing whatever I damn well want? Yes please!

What I wanted was apparently to stay in pajamas all day, drink copious amounts of tea, and putter in the sewing room. It was nice to feel inspired to sew - that's rare these days!

- Finished up most of my new Regency petticoat. I started it on Thursday night Because I Could, and this morning finished up everything but the hem, as I want to 100% make sure of the length under my new dress before I commit.

- New dress, you say? Ah, yes. Because I figured, while I had the stays and petticoat on, might as well see if that Swiss dot dress does still fit. Well...almost? But big back gaps are unhelpful, so no. And then figured while I had the gear on, might as well try all the rest of the Regency wardrobe on while I was at it.

Does not fit: Swiss dot dress
Light blue linen summer spencer
Long sleeves on the Lizzie Bennet dress (seriously, my forearms got fatter? wtf)
Pompom spencer/jumper
Gold and white evening dress

Will fit with a bit of adjustment (moving hooks/bars, adding to a front overlap, &c.):
Red linen spencer (except now there's a gap on the trim where there used to be overlap at the CF so trim HAS to come off now!)
Lizzie Bennet dress (just noticed today that I apparently spilled tea? down the front of the skirt at some point, so that's nice; have to see if that'll come out)
Cream wool dress and black wool spencer

Regency's not terribly easy to adjust size-wise, and god knows I have a BIT of a fabric stash, so it'll be much easier to just try and sell on the stuff that doesn't fit any more rather than refit it. Put that on the to-do list for next weekend, ugh.

So, okay, after I discovered most of my Regency wardrobe no longer fits (it's gonna be super fun to rediscover this for every era I do!), what did I do then? Well, I actually fitted a bodice mockup! Amazed I remember how to do that, it's been so long... I haven't 100% decided on the design for my New And Improved white 18-teens dress, so I just made a "base" mockup of a plain low-necked, back-fastening bodice and called it Good Enough For Now.

And then I was going to make some very small adjustments to the pattern I'd fitted, so I could use it for the bodice of the squiggle print set and maybe work on that a bit...but then I got a weird bee in my bonnet that I don't want to use the Redthreaded stays with that outfit after all! I want it to be more along the lines of working class, and these stays feel like they'd be a rather fashion-forward shape for a working-class woman around 1800...so I decided to make another pair of more fashion-backward stays! So...I got those stays mocked up, cut out, and basted tonight!

They're mostly based on the 1795-1805 pair from Regency Women's Dress (which I fiiiiinally acquired recently! now that it's out of print, good job, me), with some tweaks. I wasn't scaling them up as they'd nowhere near fit me - I actually started with my 1770s stays pattern, and added horizontally and subtracted vertically - so I messed with the back seam shape and am making them out of more layers of linen. I wanted to use a scrap of natural linen with a fun herringbone pattern (thanks

hiraimi !) for the outside, but it's light weight enough that I wanted another layer there.

And those will now go on hold til I get the boning for them. I've been trying to be good with sticking to available Stash (ha very ha), but since these are deliberately a bit experimental, I didn't want to waste my plastic whalebone, plus figured I could give some of those cheaper-in-period materials a try. Basically I raided basketweaving.com...for "seagrass" (it's not really seagrass these days, apparently), fine round reed, and ash splints. None of them are exactly the same as the period materials (can you tell I finally bought PoF 5 for myself as a birthday gift?), but for the cost and availability, I'm willing to give them a try. I'll see what seems like the best bet for these when it all shows up.

Also, did you know cat noses will register as touch on touch-screen laptops? I just found that out. BYE, PIP.

Current Mood: accomplished

I've said it before: I've always been easily distracted by new sewing projects, but this year is just beyond. I don't even know if I've sewn anything relating to the c1900 winter outfit since I last posted? Although in my defense, the dress pattern still hasn't actually shipped, so... and I was offered a late 1890s corset pattern to use but that hasn't come through yet either, so even if I wanted to to work on any of it, I wouldn't really be able to.

Well, maybe the hat. I did get the silk for it!

*wanders off in another direction*

Still can't find the missing piece of the orange plaid skirt (maybe in time for next summer) so cut out a different wool skirt last weekend, because that's how you deal with that, right? I really need to make a few more winter dresses rather than skirts, because after going through the dresses that don't fit any more (ahem) or are just worn out and doing a donation bag, my winter work clothes options are getting a bit thin on the ground. Not dire yet, though...so I'll be lucky if I actually manage to finish one dress. Maaaaaybe.

Also! I was shopping on fabric.com for some Seasonally Festive fabric for masks (because although my old Joanns is a three-minute drive from school, fuck them, I'm still lazily boycotting them) and came across this clearance fabric that somehow told me it wanted to be a Regency short gown and petticoat...and who am I to turn down talking fabric? I couldn't cite a specific example as to why it feels appropriately early-19th century to me, but I've developed a reasonably good eyeball for period-adjacent prints, and this isn't for a historic site or anything, plus it's a wonderfully practical (read: ugly) color...so I'm using it, fight me. I've wanted to make some kind of Regency "two-piece" since Katherine made her ADORABLE short gown for a Regency weekend way back when, but never really had a reason.

Well, I mean, I still don't have a reason, but whatever.

No idea when I'll start it, either - might be today, might be over Christmas break...WHO KNOWS. It did occur to me that I really ought to finish my half-done (??) short stays that I started, uhhh, ten months ago(?) rather than making this to fit over my old nasty corded bodiced petticoat. I could make it to wear over my 1790s stays, but I'd rather push it forward rather than back in date (Costume in Detail puts it at 1798-1800), plus the 1790s stays have those funny little padded balls on the back for skirt support that I don't necessarily want for this. So I probably should dig those unfinished stays out and at least get them wearable before diving into this outfit.

And who knows, maybe the 1900 dress pattern will show up in the mail this week and I'll suddenly want to make that! Or a new holiday-ish dress from the red-and-gold cotton that I also couldn't resist in this fabric.com order! Or maybe I'll randomly decide to make a new 1860s ballgown! Who the hell knows!

I did make a school week's worth of masks yesterday afternoon from that holiday fabric though, so there's something actually accomplished LOL.