I took a deep breath and dived down once again

Into the 18th century!

So I have been quiet for some time, school starting again and a new year to, this new years resolution, sew and wear more dresses the same as last years.

So what is all this about 18th century, well but yes, I had that grand plan about the green Madame Pompadour dress last winter, but it was to much money for the silk, not the right colour was anywhere to be found and it all ran out in the sand.
But an internet friend showed of her new pink robe a la francaise and I totally fell down into the deep sea of 18th century clothing. Last plan was a robe a la francaise, this time I’m going with a robe à l’anglaise with zone front and different coloured skirt (and zone front to) this way I don’t need to buy all the silk at the same time, smart thing right :P

So first I needed to finish my pair of stays I started February last year but never finished. The only thing left was to deal with the shoulder straps and bind the top. The shoulder straps did not work with my body and the issue seemed hard to deal with at that time, I was just to lazy. So yesterday I researched the internet for a while looking for sources for pair of stays without the straps, since I have seen people do them before so I hoped that there were some historical sources to support that. I found a bunch of drawings and over at http://www.laracorsets.com I found that her two oldest corsets both had no straps.

So I just chopped my of to! It took about 1 hour to take out the steel boning and trim them to new lengths, cut of the straps and some of the back and then bind it.

And then I needed a pattern for the dress.
I had gotten a new book this Christmas it was “A History of Costume” by Carl Köhler and it actually had a diagram over exactly what I needed, the diagram was easy to follow and it was easy to draw a pattern from, I just needed to fix it to my size but that was easy to. After one mock up I had a nice bodice to work from.

Then I made a makeshift bum roll out of scrap fabric and pleated some fabric to see how much I might need for the “over dress” part.

I am making the dress “en fourreau” so ignore the incorrect shape of the “tail”, It will also have more seams in the back but since they are not shaping anything I ignored them in the mock up.

 

Panniers

These were finished for soooooo long ago, but silly me had forgotten them and I found them under a pile of fabric. But here they are!

Sewn in what I think is a linen fabric, but it could be cotton to, but it feels more like linen. The pattern is from Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh It went together really easy and for the boning channels I have a simple cotton ribbon.

All the raw edges are folded in and sewn together by hand.

All the visible seams except for the boning channels are sewn by hand with flax waxed with beeswax.

 

what is hapening atm

Oh my, have I been busy, yes. But well I am ALWAYS busy. I’m doing a damask weave right now, and there is a lot of preparing work involved in the process. And I have also finished my “Six little black dresses” a project we were given in our design class. “Make a collection of 4-5 garments” was the assignment.

I kind of took it to overkill since I made six dresses, and also made 1:4 of life size mannequins and dresses. I also tried my hand on bookbinding for the first time making a book. If you wish to see the full collection please visit my “bilddagbok” (picture diary, it is in Swedish, but there is not a whole lot of text anyway) I am really pleased with it all, it all turned out as I wished.

 

lace

I have found some really nice lace to use for the robe a la Francaise, and it was for free! We were at a underwear company with school this Wednesday, and there the nice lady who were showing us all the nice machines and materials they used said “do you want some materials” Yes! we all said and the lady picked out a BIG box with lace and other materials that were leftover from their production. When we got back to school our teacher said “take stuff when you need it”.
So I took some lace since I knew that I will be using it later.

It is not really what I wanted, it is synthetic, but it is quite high quality so it does not look all that horrible and to find cotton lace that looks like this seems to be impossible. I like the lace on the last picture least, but it is ok and It will be the flounce that is under the other ones.

I don’t know if I have mentioned that I will be making a replica of pompadours green dress, and look at the flounces of lace, I think that my lace will fit perfectly.

 

flowers

the robe a la francaise project is still not on the move, the problem of finding a nice fabric have landed it on the waiting list, and I need to take care of the corset issue first. But now I have gotten the stuff from VenaCavaDesign that I needed so I can finish the mock-up and then move on to the real thing. The pocket hoops are finished and I will take some pictures of them perhaps this Tuesday.

But now on to what the title says, flowers! My dress will have about 200 pink flowers on it, and fabric roses does not look that authentic as I would wish them to look, so I goggled fabric roses for some hours last night and found not fabric roses but how to make flowers out of coffee filters on the Martha Stewart site. They look truly awesome and real. Check it out here!

This youtube clip shows the technique to, I had trouble making the Martha Stewart video to load.

I tried my hand on one this morning, it was dead easy but I had the wrong kind of tape so it was a bit tricky. But it turned out nice anyway, I only had brown filters at home so I have not painted it at all, I can Imagen that some paint will make it come alive some more.

 

18th century pair of stays

To my Robe a la Francaise I need a pair of stays, I found the pattern in “Corsets and crinolines” by Norah Waugh and used the same technique as I did with my pocket hoops I scaled the pattern using a overhead projector on the wall and then putting up some paper and draw the pattern on it, to make it fit my measurements I just moved the over head projector further back or nearer the paper to make the pattern on the wall bigger or smaller, and then I measured the bust measurement on the pattern on the wall and made sure that it was the same as mine – 10cm (approximately – 4 inches)

the top boning channel is kind of messed up, without thinking I sewed the other channels shut, when I should have done as I did with the channel under it, I have fixed that now.

So now I am making a mock up corset, to make sure that it actually fit me before I cut into the coutil and silk. But I am sewing it as a real corset, with boning, strength fabric (non stretchy twill) and nice binding. If it fit me I have a functional pair of stays that perhaps is not as strong as my silk one will be, but that works. If it is to big or to small, I can sell it without feeling bad about it.

 

pocket hoops

I decided to make a 18th century dress as the “special project” in school this spring, and for that I need the stuff that goes under ^^ I am making a “Robe a la Francaise” and I decided to make pocket hoops in stead of the kidney shaped crinoline.

I used the pattern from “Corsets and crinolines” by Norah Waugh, I scaled the pattern using a overhead projector on the wall and then putting up some paper and draw the pattern on it. It worked really well and was easy. The sewing part was also a piece of cake, it went together really well.

They are not finished yet, I need to put them on a waist band and finish the raw edges by hand, and turn them, so that you see the pretty outside in stead of the tape for the spring steel and the raw edges. The fabric is a really nice linen fabric, striped with leaf garlands on.