A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I'm even tired of the word "beige" at this point, sheesh. But I'm quite happy with how it came out, and I think it looks loads better than the Ugly Shirtwaist! (Which won't be retired, like, ever, because it's great for hot weather. But now at least I have another option.)

Blog post here

Amusingly, there was a truck JUST out of frame in all these pics...they were setting up for some sort of event, and there was an enormous truck and trailer just to the left side of the house. And half my pics had some rando in a red t-shirt walking back and forth in the background. Ahhh, gotta love editing! xD

And now I am totally going to be late to work because I wanted to get this all out of the way before I went! Heh.

I thought I was almost done...but then as I was ironing the pleats of voile for the white collar, it occurred to me that I ought to have cuffs as well! Damn. Wish it hadn't occurred to me, haha. I could make plain ones, but I know that pleated ones to match the collar (and the upper side of the dress fabric cuffs, for that matter) will look better. Okay, okay...

It's supposed to be in the low 80s tomorrow and Wednesday, so I'll gussy up and get photos one of those days (it might rain tomorrow so I can't promise tomorrow). And then I can wad the whole thing up into my 19thc costume bin and be done with it, whew! It's been hanging around for far too long. And then back to the dinner dress! I think.

I was pretty lazy as regards sewing today...I could have gotten the bodice all finished if I'd really tried, but...didn't. xD Tonight I tried it on, "it's really almost done! just need to finish the neck! I could totally wear this tomorrow!", but only had it on for about 35 seconds before I remembered why I wasn't pushing myself to finish and wear it tomorrow. Hot! (The sewing room is un-air-conditioned, and it's still 82 at midnight. Shirtwaist 'tis!)

So I just need to put a facing in the neck edge - Bodice Take 1 had a collar, but that collar doesn't fit anymore, plus the fit of the neck at the back is just a wee bit funky still, and it's a lot more obvious with a collar on. I did a brief survey of my books, and it looks like a ton of early 1880s had just a white collar, rather than a dress-collar-and-white-collar combo. So I have zero qualms about doing a plain finish! (I could pipe it, but I don't want to and you can't make me.) I do still have to make a white collar to tack in, unless the one from my blue wool 1878 dress will work. Don't think it will as that's a v-neckline and this one is much higher, but we'll see.

Mostly successfully futzed with the beige bodice today to get it to fit - it's not really 100%, but it's vastly better than before. (And when all's said and done...it's not the most attractive print in the world anyway. So.) I will have to put a wedge in the sleeves to get them to fit, but I didn't have to piece in the front of the armscye, so that's good.

I didn't get around to actually taking the basting stitches out, cutting lining pieces, and sewing the awkward fixer-pieces in properly...but I'm off tomorrow so I can do it then. (It's definitely going to be too hot to wear this bodice if we do go on Sunday, but I'd like to finish it anyway! Just putting it on and taking it off got me all hot and grumpy. I think I need to acknowledge to myself that just 'cause it's cotton, doesn't make it a Philadelphia-summer-appropriate dress...)

There are some stupid side wrinkles that I don't think will come out even when the side's reboned, but oh well. I'll just consider myself lucky I could get the damn thing to fit at all and call it a day! Not all home sewers in 1880 had perfectly-fitting bodices, right? ;)

We might go to a Boer War event this weekend at a local-ish fort (if it's not 90F, which it probably will be), so I felt vaguely inspired today to start fixing my beige cotton print bodice instead of continuing on the dinner dress bodice mockup. It's not really wandering very far off, as I want it for Belvidere too...unless it's hot enough that I have to wear the Ugly Shirtwaist yet again.

I can't remember what details I posted about the bad fit of the beige print bodice so I'll recap - basically I used my pattern taken from a fabric mockup that had stretched a lot and I didn't realize (that's what I get for being lazy and not cutting it out on paper the first time I used it, for my first natural form dress a couple years ago!)...so I sewed it almost all together before realizing it totally didn't fit. Not like, oh, I'll just have to add an underlap and put the buttons all the way over, but the CF edges didn't even meet, and the armscye was pinchy at the front. Which I then tried to easy-fix by letting out a dart, fussing with the shoulder seams, and pretending it fit, and I got it pretty close to done before acknowledging that it'd be embarrassing to wear a bodice that fit like that. Which was where I left it the week before Belvidere last year! I knew I'd have to take a good bit of it apart, and Didn't Want To.

So, more recently, I took the step of undoing all the work I needed to, to start fixing the damn thing. Took the collar and sleeves off, unpicked the bottom facing, boning and the waist stay from the side seam and took said seam out. I pinned rough strips of fabric into the let-out seam and tried the thing on with a corset today to check and see if that side-seam-fix would be my best plan. Yup.

It's going to be a very stupidly-shaped piece of fabric once it's fitted, but it'll work. And less obvious than sticking something in CF, which was the only other option (best practice would have been to just recut the fronts, but I don't have enough fabric left for that!). I may have to piece in the front of the armscyes (as I'm a meticulous seam-trimmer, and had already notched/tacked down all the SA, of course) and put a wedge in the sleeve armpit since it was a smooth-fitting sleeve and the armscye might now be too big for it...but maybe not.

I put the second dart back in the fronts, and I'm in the process of sewing on 10,00 hooks & bars, since I think my best plan is to have the closure done before fine-tuning the weirdo side-wedges!

All this and I'm fairly sure it'll be too hot on Sunday to want to go to the fort anyway. But I want this bodice fixed up either way!

A digression: I would like to know why there are shirtwaists in the 1860s, and then you see NONE, zero zippo zilch, up til about 1890. I've been looking through my books, through Pinterest, and there's nothing. Not one single shrtwaist can I find! I find it hard to believe that all women stopped wearing them in 1869 and suddenly picked them back up in 1890, but they certainly disappeared from fashion, anyway. There are a decent amount of yoked bodices out there in the natural form era, but they're all made of the same fabric as the skirt(s), nothing in a lightweight white.

Why was I looking? Because the forecast for Saturday is currently hovering in the 90-95F range, which is...not great, Bob. Not dressing in costume didn't cross my mind, but a lighter weight bodice would be nice! Two layers of cotton broadcloth (which is what the current bodice is) isn't terrible, but the boning, tight fit, and high collar aren't exactly cool, either. So I went browsing for shirtwaists, and couldn't find a single one!

And said, f it, I'm making a shirtwaist anyway. I doubt that literally no women in hot climates were wearing shirtwaists around 1880, even if they were horribly unfashionable - and even if I'm wrong, I don't care. So there.

So I made a good portion of one today, and oh gawd it's ugly. It looks like a sister-wife's maternity blouse from 1992 at the moment, and it's not really going to get much better once I put sleeves on...but dammit, it's voile and not tight-fitting!

Will also have to throw together a corset cover, as my corset's blue, but hey, how hard can that be? (Ha ha ha.)

So I think the mockup stretched, because the bodice is kind of too small. OOOPS. Re-sewed most of the seams (had notched some of them already so couldn't do them all), still too small. Took out one of the darts, okay, we can work with that. Of course that meant trimming the CF down to a very weird shape, and refitting the shoulders and the neckline. So, I spent my day doing that. Yay?

(Ideally I would have just recut the fronts, but I don't have enough fabric left to recut the fronts and have sleeves, and I'm pretty sure I need sleeves, so.)

I was off today, but there was a lot of being out and about, so I didn't have too much sewing time. I did get some mocking up for the bodice done though...

 - I bought Butterick 6400 in the last pattern sale for a dollar or whatever, so I was curious to try it out. I sort of enjoy that they didn't even bother making a sample of it to put on the pattern envelope...not usually a good sign, haha. The double points at the front are more mid-late 80s, but the long tail in the back made me think natural form. And...yup, it's definitely a kind of weird hybrid of the two. Not actually that ill-fitting, surprisingly, but more fussing than I wanted to put into this bodice. (Although the sleeves suck. Don't use the sleeves if you get this pattern...they're straight. GTFO.) I kept the mockup as-is, for the distant point in the future in which I make a late-bustle dress (you know it'll happen someday), just in case, as it would definitely require less futzing for that.

- It did cross my mind to try scaling up one of the patterns from Fashions of the Gilded Age - but then I figured it would probably be easier to just use the pieces from my 1878 dress from last year. Yup! Just drew in butt-pleats somewhat haphazardly, and cut out the rest of it as-is.

- And I ended up getting one side about half-fitted, and the bottom edge trimmed up. Now I have to match the second side to the first, and pull the shoulders up just a tad, which shouldn't be a problem to get done tomorrow. I'm waiting for some German plastic boning in the mail (I wanted to try it out, and this seemed an easier opportunity than an entire pair of stays or corset, haha), which should show up Friday, and then I will be all set to get going on this bodice!

Well, I mean, I can get most of the actual bodice done without the boning, of course. Unless I fall back asleep for another week, though, I shouldn't have a problem getting this done in good time. Famous last words!

I'm being very lazy about my Belvidere outfit...I still kind of have the time to do so, but at this point I really do need to buckle down and actually sew something. Today all I did was cut out silk and lining pieces for the hat. Um, woo hoo?

At least part of this procrastination is because I've had the worst time deciding whether I want a yoked bodice or not. Because I couldn't find buttons I liked for a yoked bodice, while I could for a regular fitted one. I wanted flat, slightly larger buttons if I did a yoked bodice. (Yes, I'm weird.) So today I finally said WHATEVER and bought the buttons for a fitted bodice. Possibly not enough, but I bought all we had, and I'll have to make a mockup first anyway to see if I need more. Ugh....mockups.