Big Hair

Just thought I'd pop in and show you what I've been working on this week.

A group of us from my city are driving to St Louis to join the St. Louis Georgian Sewing Society for a francaise tea. That's a fancy tea party at the Ritz Carleton where we all wear our 18th century finery.

If you remember me posting pics of my 18th century "Marie Antoinette-style" dress, you'll remember that I had GIGANTIC hair. (No, really! It was freakin' huge!) When I cut my hair short, I used the inner wire support form to make a similar style wig. Well, that was very good for a stage presentations but very unwieldy for regular wear. So I decided to re-style the wig. I've spent the last week undoing, de-tangling and restyling it.

BTW - I used the book 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling by Kendra Van Cleave. I can't recommend it highly enough! I chose one of the designs from the late 1760s-early 1770s that was a medium height.

Here are the results -

Before

After

After

Figments and Filaments 2014

I know...I have been very lax about posting my costumes. Mea culpa.
Since my sister asked where my pics were, I decided to catch up a little.
So here are pics from a brand new costume convention that started up in the Midwest - Figments and Filaments. 2014 was the premiere year. I went because I absolutely adored some of the guests of honor. (Especially the lady who does the Gothic Charm School website!)

Anyway, on to the costumes...

I didn't make anything new for this one, but I got to wear a good variety.

I entered the fashion show with the game character costume that I made for Naka-Kon.

(Photo taken by Chelci Gearhiser)

Got a really great photo of my 18th century dress. (Photo by ImageCollectors)

Here's me and Jennifer talking to people about our local chapter of the International Costumers' Guild.

Woohoo! My article goes public!

The reason I started this blog was to document the creation of my competition costume for Costume-Con 2013.
Then I decided to wait until after the competition for my tell all story.
Then I was asked to write an article on its creation for Virtual Costumer e-zine, so I put it on hold here once again.

Now you can read the whole thing!
The older versions of Virtual Costumer are available to the public when a new version comes out for the guild members. So my article is now available for your viewing pleasure.

http://www.siwcostumers.org/newsletterarchive/VirtCostV11-I3-2013.pdf

Engageantes? What are those?

I started backwards on the dress…

I didn’t jump in to the dress construction right away.  I started with the accessories. Huh?

“Why?” you may ask.

Well, thank you for asking.

I was kind of putting off doing the stays, which intimidated me. And I couldn’t do the dress until I made the stays.

So I started with the accessories.

First up:

Engageantes (or sleeve ruffles)

(Close up of a painting from the MET)

These sleeve ruffles were made of lace like this one from the MET:

or fine embroidered cotton like these from LACMA:

They were basted to the end of the sleeve and were removed for cleaning or switching to a new dress.

They are cut in a wavy pattern and the ends are stitched together. Then the top is gathered and basted to the end of the sleeve. The skinny part fits in the crook of the elbow. The long part hangs down in the back.

Most of the ones that I’ve seen on the museum web sites appear to be around 39-44” long and around 8-9 inches wide at the widest part. By the 1770s they had multiple layers, 2 or 3. I decided to make mine with 2 layers. A 9” wide one and a smaller one about 6-7” wide. 

I thought about getting a pre-embroidered cotton and making the ruffles out of that. But I *really* wanted lace. Such beautiful silk taffeta deserves it, but I figured that I’d never find a good enough lace for a price I could afford. The lace had to be at least 9” wide. And it had to be soft and drapey. Most lace today is stiff and scratchy. And I needed about 4-5 yards.

Then I decided to try searching for cotton lace on etsy and I found this:

Hmmm….

Looks soft enough to gather.

Seller says it’s soft. Seller says it’s cotton (probably with a synthetic background, though). The pattern is a little heavier than most 18^th century examples I’ve seen, but not outrageously so. I honestly know next to nothing about lace, but it looks good to me.

And it was only $12 for 2.5 yards.

So I took a chance and ordered 5 yards.

I waited for the shipping from China, tracking it all the way.

Then it finally came!

Wait…”that package is too small for that much lace” was my first thought.

But it wasn’t. The lace was just THAT soft and drapey that it was folded up into a very small envelope.

You just can’t believe how soft and flowy this stuff is!

Here's what it looked like finished.

The lace may not be exactly period, but aren’t they yummy?

 

The Fabulous Fabric

Okay, now that Costume Con is over, I can start posting all of the entries that I wrote way back when I started this blog. You remember --- that's why I started this whole thing?

When I talked about it, I put up the intro and talked about the pattern (which I ended up not using actually).

Now on to the things I wrote back then:

Got the fabric! Yay!!!!!

Beautiful, smooth, shiny, crisp ….

So many adjectives, so little time.

The color isn’t as peach as the picture appeared on the web site. It’s more of a beautiful cross between peach and baby pink. “Pinch” or “Peak”, maybe? (grin)

And it’s nice and tightly woven, too. Just like a good taffeta should be. No raveling at the ends at all. I showed it to some costumers here and one of them said that it looked almost plastic because it was so smooth and reflective. No slubs on this silk!

The Hips Don't Lie

So I'm finally able to get back to where I started with this blog - my competition costume for Costume-Con 31! I started to blog about the whole process, but then thought that I shouldn't reveal everything before the convention.

Now the convention is over, so here it is:

 

It's all hand-sewn using period techniques. I won best workmanship for the Journeyman category and an honorable mention for my documentation. Nothing for presentation, though. Phooey! (pout)

I guess I know what I have to work on now, huh? Although I did get a couple of really big laughs. I came out and started dancing to harpsichord music. After about 30 seconds, disco lights started flashing and Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" started playing & I boogied down. :-)

That's where the title of this post came from - it was the name of my entry in the competition.

I thought it was appropriate given the hoops. There were 2 other women in the competition with even bigger panniers, though.  Mme de Pompadour's gown was more elegant and Marie Antoinette's was more over-the-top, but I think my dress was prettier. (I even did the "pretty, pretty princess" dance the first time I put it on.)

And, hey.... check out the hair!!!:

 

 It took about 45 minutes to get my hair up in that style. Another lady in the competition (the Marie Antoinette) had a similar style. Hers was a wig, but it was even taller than mine! I was limited by the length of my hair, but I honestly don't think that I could have gotten it any higher by myself. I could have had longer hair, but my arms couldn't have reached any further. (grin)

Over the next several blog posts I'm going to detail the whole process of the costume from start to finish, so I'll talk more about how I did the hair later.

(BTW, the convention had a great photographer so I got a lot of good professional shots of most of the costumes that I took. Check him out at www.donsearlephoto.com.)