Tag: 2207

Waltz on the Wye 2012 – Friday

Friday

We arrived in Chepstow at lunchtime on Friday. After we’d settled into the hotel and had something to eat, we got changed and went off to explore. I checked out Chepstow Castle with my sonic screwdriver. As you do.

Friday

I only saw five of these coats over the weekend, including my own! This was a bit of a surprise, because I’d expected to see lots of people wearing outfits made from Simplicity’s steampunk patterns. Too obvious, perhaps? The coat is Simplicity 2172, and the skirt is Simplicity 2207. I learned the hard way that it’s not a good idea to walk around on wet grass, in the rain, in a floor length velvet skirt. By the end of the night it had soaked up what felt like all the water in Chepstow, and my shoes and socks were soaked through as well. The skirt still wasn’t properly dry when I brought it home three days later, but thankfully it seems to have survived a trip through the washing machine and tumble dryer relatively unscathed!

Friday

I also learned the hard way that when you accidentally drop your beautiful new sonic screwdriver onto the pavement, bits can break off. Oops…

My absolute highlight of Friday evening (and indeed of the entire weekend) was Morgan & West’s magic show. A pair of Time Travelling Magicians who’ve fooled Penn & Teller, they were extremely clever and absolutely hilarious!  At the beginning of they show they explained that there would be a lot of audience participation (argh!), but promised that they wouldn’t embarrass or humiliate anyone. They were true to their word, and the show was funny, exciting, and extremely clever without ever resorting to being shocking, sweary or gory. (The only thing I didn’t like was the needle-and-thread-swallowing, but that’s just my own personal squeamishness.) I loved the part with the apple and the shoe, and the trick which looked as though we were being shown how it was done but we actually weren’t. I’m not sure how descriptive I can be about a magic show without venturing into the territory of terrible spoilers, so you’ll just have to believe me when I tell you that they were absolutely brilliant!

After the magic show we headed out into the rain to grab something to eat from the Strumpets with Crumpets (goat’s cheese and blackcurrant jam, yum!) and to watch the end of Boxcar Aldous Huxley‘s set in the bandstand. Any band with a french horn player usually gets my vote, but add a harmonium, saw, banjo and euphonium, and you’ve got a very interesting sound indeed!

We went back to the Drill Hall for the headlining band, Rogora Khart. A sort of bonkers Welsh Russian circus punk folk band, with clown make-up and a bellydancer. It took me a little while to get the hang of them, I must admit, but by the end of the evening I was really enjoying the music. Although Paul says I’m not allowed to learn to play the Bombarde. Meany.

Steampunk Silk

Steampunk Silk

This is a costume that I made for a friend, way back last October for a Hallowe’en event. She already had a corset and a mask, so they dictated the copper, gold and brown accent colours.

The ivory silk had a previous incarnation as her wedding dress. The slightly distressed texture is a result of putting it through the washing machine, but it left the fabric amazingly soft and a joy to work with. There was enough to make a jacket and a bustled skirt, with some left over for accessories.

Steampunk Silk

The jacket is a modification of two Simplicity steampunk patterns – 2172 and 2207. The back and sleeves were taken from 2207, with the front from 2172. I added lacing into the princess seams at the back, and beading to the cuffs. The buttons were from the original dress, as were the Swarovski crystal beads.

Steampunk Silk

The bustle and swags are in sections, all interchangeable so they can be worn in lots of different ways. They simply tie at the waist with ribbons. The skirt itself is bustled at the back, using ribbons sewn through channels in the centre back seam. This can be let down into a train. There’s a little bit of ruching at the front too, conveniently placed to disguise a stain that wouldn’t come out! (Shhh, don’t tell…)

I also made a petticoat to go underneath, to give  the skirt a little bit of extra fullness. I don’t know why I didn’t take a photograph of that, but you can just see the ruffle peeking out, here. There are better photos of the outfit being worn to stunning effect, but I need to get permission before I post them here. Thankfully it was well received, and looked absolutely fabulous!

As always, I wish I’d had a bit more time to make this. The bustle and swags were a bit rushed, and I would have liked to add much more beading to the cuffs. But I absolutely loved making it. It was a real treat to work with such sumptuous silk duchess satin, and to swap creative ideas with a friend. In fact, it’s inspired me to modify my own wedding dress for an event I’m attending in May.  You’ll have to wait and see how it turns out!

Vaguely Victorian

I’ve been asked to work an extra day this week to help out with a school visit, for which I may have heard myself ask my boss “would you like me to come in dressed as a Victorian?”. The session goes with the Victorian part of our building, Palmer House, which was designed by Waterhouse (of Natural History Museum and Reading Town Hall fame) and built in 1880-82.

Paul, bless him, has managed to rein me in from “I NEED TO MAKE A COMPLETE PERIOD-CORRECT VICTORIAN OUTFIT BY TUESDAY” to “please can we have a look in your wardrobe first”.

Victorian-ish outfit

However, I may have used “dressing up as a Victorian for work” as an excuse to buy a corset. I chose a black brocade one which was on the “corset of the day” offer for £25. It ended up costing me almost £40 by the time I’d paid vat and extra for super-fast shipping, but I still call that a bargain. It’s not expertly made, but it’s no worse than any Vollers corset I’ve owned in the past, and it gives a “Victorian enough” shape under all those layers, so I’m happy with that.

The website was a bit weird – I kept finding other people’s things added to my shopping cart and at one point it kept telling me that I was logged in as somebody else, which made me very nervous about giving them my credit card details. But I placed my order at five to three on Friday, 3pm being the cut off for next day delivery, expecting it to arrive on Monday. The postman knocked on the door at 9:30 on Saturday morning, with my corset! So that was extremely impressive. (He also brought my lingerie-sewing book which I thought had got lost in the trans-atlantic post, so hooray for that too!)

Victorian-ish outfit

I posted on Facebook about making a Victorian outfit in a hurry, and Chris from Progress Theatre offered to lend me a bustle pad from their wardrobe. I replaced the worn-out elastic with cotton tape, and I think it’ll make quite an acceptable late-Victorian silhouette.

Victorian-ish outfit

Next I added my lilac petticoat, for volume, and a plain white vest to cover up the black dress and corset. I went for black foundation layers because I’d originally intended to wear a black blouse, but the two I thought might be suitable turned out to have inappropriate sleeves.

Victorian-ish outfit

Here’s a side view with the bustle. Is my bum going to look big in this? 😉

Victorian-ish outfit

Next layer: the ivory lawn pintucked blouse that I usually wear for being a rural Edwardian when I’m out with the clog dancers.

Victorian-ish outfit

I spent all day making this skirt, but unfortunately velvet doesn’t photograph at all well in poor light so I can’t show it to you properly. It’s Simplicity 2207, the same as my red and black stripy one.

Victorian-ish outfit

And for the finishing touches: a black wool man’s dress waistcoat, a length of black ribbon, and a marcasite brooch in the shape of an owl. I wear this waistcoat to work quite often, usually with the owl on the lapel.

Victorian-ish outfit

I must admit that I’m not completely convinced by the bustle, even though it’s much smaller with the weight of the velvet skirt on the top. I was looking at photographs of Victorian teachers and the more I see the less I’m convinced that a bustle, even a small one, was worn underneath everyday workwear.

I’ll try the whole outfit on together, and hopefully I’ll be able to get some better photos while I’m at work tomorrow. I can’t do much about my extremely un-Victorian hair and glasses, sadly, but I think this is not too bad, considering I had almost all of it lurking in my wardrobe already!

Steampunk Petticoat

Petticoat

You might have noticed that this is made to roughly the same pattern as the black linen dress. This time the ruffle’s a bit shorter, but that was mostly because I’d almost run out of stripy fabric. The body of the dress is a little longer to compensate. The hem is trimmed with one layer of wide flat lace, and another of red gathered lace to provide a little bit of extra fullness. The butterfly sleeves are simply overlocked at the edges, and the beaded trim matches the skirt.

Petticoat and skirt

Here’s how they look together – rather smart, I think! The plain red doesn’t exactly match the stripes, but I think they’re close enough that it doesn’t matter too much. The petticoat doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to the fullness of the skirt because it’s much too narrow, so you probably won’t even see the two layers of lace. The attention to detail makes me feel better about the outfit though, so it’s worth the effort.

Simplicity 2207 – Striped Steampunk Skirt

Simplicity 2207

The title says is all really – this is Simplicity 2207, my striped steampunk skirt!

Somewhat eye-bending, but I knew the stripes on the skirt would end up going in all directions, so I deliberately placed them vertically on the front and horizontally on the ruffle.

Both edges of the ruffle are finished on the overlocker, with the “raw” edges left visible. Over the gathered join is four metres of beaded trim, with four metres of braid stitched over the top. I think I spent more on the trimmings than I did on the fabric!

(This was sadly evident as I was sewing – the black stripes are printed rather than woven, and I ended up with very grubby hands. Yuk.)

Simplicity 2207

I attempted to put pockets in the side seams, but that turned out to be a lesson in reading the entirety of the instructions before you start. The waistband has a somewhat unusual construction, so the two sides of my pockets didn’t match. Not wishing to rip out all the overlocking and start again, I simply chopped off the pocket pieces and pretended I didn’t want pockets after all.

The back of the skirt is twice as full as the front, and has an elasticated waist. I have a horrible suspicion that, despite measuring, I’ve cut the elastic a little bit too short. Thanks to the waistband construction I can’t easily get in and change it, so for now I’ve adjusted my dress form to be a little bit bigger than me, in the hope that it’ll stretch out a bit before I wear it. Fingers crossed.

Edwardian-ish Blouse

Edwardian-ish Blouse

I don’t think I showed you the finished blouse that I was making for Aldbrickham Clog & Step Dancers. It took much longer than I was expecting, because I ended up having to make all of the buttonholes by hand.

The body and collar of the blouse are from Simplicity 3623, with pintucks instead of gathering at the shoulders. The sleeves are from Simplicity 2207, and the buttons down the front were added by request.

I’m just waiting to find out whether the blouse is going to be okay for dancing – because of the shape of the sleeve heads, I might need to add a little gusset at the underarm to allow a better range of movement. Otherwise, I’m really pleased with how it’s turned out.

Satin Bustle Skirt

Bustly skirt - front

To go with the silk corset, I made a satin bustled overskirt. The idea was to have something that could be worn over several different skirts, and could be varied in style.

The top layer is from Simplicity 2207, with a bit of modification. Instead of using a single layer, I doubled the fabric to give a bit more volume. Rather than making ruffles, I gathered a pretty wide lace along the centre back and the lower edge.

Bustly skirt - back

The under layer is made from two widths of fabric joined together in a french seam and gathered in to the waistband. Left rectangular, all the edges were trimmed with the same wide lace, and then the sides were gathered tightly to create the draping at the front. The whole thing simply ties around the waist.

In between the two layers, below the waistband, are several plastic rings. These correspond with ribbons sewn onto the skirt. The ribbons can be pulled through the rings and tied in place to create different bustle effects, or left loose to create a train. I used six metres of satin in total, but because it’s such light fabric you get a lot of volume without too much extra weight.

The skirt, corset, pirate shirt and waistcoat all took a trip to the Summer Darkness festival, and I’m hoping to be able to show you some action photos soon!