Aqua Regency Ensemble

So I promised pictures of at least the new things I made for Costume Con!  The first was probably my favorite outfit of the weekend, especially to wear as it was very comfortable.

I don't have a good picture of the dress alone.  It's a drop front based on the pattern in Janet Arnold.  I am not happy with the sleeves and plan on re-doing them at some point, but with the Spencer, that doesn't show and so doesn't matter too much!  The dress is made from a very lightweight cotton with blue Swiss dots.  I left a train, and I love the way it looks.  I sewed most of this by hand.

The Spencer was made from silk from Sewfisticated.  It has a very fine slub but it doesn't show too much.  I based this on a Spencer that Elizabeth Bennett wears in the 1995 Pride & Prejudice. Most of this was done by machine as I was in a hurry to get it finished.  The bodice is lined with aqua cotton, the sleeves are unlined.  They are in three parts, the long undersleeve, short puffed sleeve and vandyked over sleeve.  The puffed and vandyked sleeve are the same pattern with the bottom cut off the oversleeve.  The raw edges were then turned up and hemed with a small running stitch.  The back and shoulder seams were also top stitched by hand to add to the look.

My accessories were a straw hat or capote based on one that Marianne Dashwood wears in Sense & Sensibility.  The stripe fabric was cut on the bias and gathered to the crown piece and the brim.  I then wrapped a piece of ivory silk ribbon and a piece of blue velvet ribbon over the brim and finished it with a small rosette made from the striped fabric with a covered button in the middle.  The brim was created from a straw hat from Michael's that was partially dissembled and then slightly shaped with water.

The reticule is from the same stripe fabric as the hat.  I made up my own pattern of four diamond shaped pieces sewn together with a drawstring through the top and a small tassel of velvet ribbon on the bottom.  I also wore elbow length leather gloves with it and cream boots.

My hair was super simple to do as I created some little curly hairpieces to go on either side of my face and over a bun of my own hair in the back.  I was inspired by Harriet Smith's hair from the new Emma movie.

The Drop Front Gown

So, I uploaded pics and thought I'd share.  They're not the best since they are obviously backlit, but this is my new sewing space!  Hooray for not having everything crammed into my room anymore!   I used the pattern from Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion, I think it's the 1805 dress?  Can't remember, it's the only drop-front one though. 

The fabric is a blue swiss dot on white.

It's going to have a bit of a train!

You can't see it, but there are tiny hand stitches on those curved seams... :)

This was draping the Spencer over the dress.

I decided not to redo the bib because although I don't like how wide I made the binding around the edges, I've decided to make dorset buttons to attach it to the dress and they're a little bigger so I need more space for a button hole.  I don't know why I decided to do that since I have lots of lovely vintage buttons that I am sure would work.  So I'll share a pic of the button too.

With my pointer finger -my nail polish is totally chipped, so you get this side... :)

The back!

I started the second, but it's looking dingy (since I continued with the same piece of thread) and it's not centered so I'm going to redo it.  I used this tutorial to figure out how to make them.  It actually wasn't that hard, though it did take me about 40 minutes to make one button... o_O  It was my first though, so I'm sure I'd get faster the more I did it.

Still need to get sleeves on this thing!!  *sigh*  So much to do!

Crossing things off the list - the Aqua Spencer!

I made myself be super productive this weekend.  Only two weeks before Costume Con!

By Friday night I had my corset pretty much done.  All that's left is shaping the top and bottom a bit, binding it and adding lace and flossing (which may have to wait...) so that's good!  I need to have the article done by Friday, which means that needs to be my focus this week.

But I couldn't resist getting started on my Regency Spencer!  I so wanted to have this done.  So I did a lot of it by machine which is too bad, but some of it has to be hand finished, so that will at least add the look to it a bit.  I'm pretty pleased with how it's turning out.  I decided to make a copy of Lizzy's Blue Spencer after all.  The sleeves were so cute and I liked how it curved up in the back!  Saturday was spent draping and cutting and assembling the bodice.  The sleeves took forever to work out and I'm still not 100% pleased, but I was pulling out my hair, so they'll do.  I was also trying to pattern sleeves for the drop-front dress this will be worn over but had absolutely no luck!  Talk about sleevil!!  It's because of the small back pannel.  The armscye comes in really far in the back, so everything I tried was pulling.  I need to figure out to account for that still.

Anyway, here are pics of the Spencer!  I took pics of the dress but with my camera, not my phone, so of course I haven't uploaded those.  No time!

First, my inspiration:

See more here.

Still needs buttons...

Showing the zig-zag sleeve detail...

See the back curves up a bit? The gathering of my skirt will flow perfectly from under there!

And I managed to get the entire thing out of one yard of fabric!!  With all these scraps left over!  So that means more projects with the aqua silk! :)

Talk about conserving fabric! :)

All that's left to do is finish one side of the zig-zag sleeve (just turning it up - the edge is fray checked - and pick stitching it) bind both of the gathered sleeves and then hem the long sleeves, make buttons and do button holes.  These unfortunately will probably have to be done by machine.  There's just no time!

I am kind of sad I didn't make it short sleeved.  I got these fabulous white leather gloves (NOS that are actually "washable" though I'm not going to try that out) that I thought would look perfect with the dress!  So summery!  Oh well, I can still wear them maybe...

You can see the tag that says it's washable.

So many little details still left to work on though!  Three hats, hems and petticoats!  Not to mention finishing the Francaise!  I think I'm going to have to do hems on the machine as well.  I'm not going to add a placket to my Tudor gown though, maybe just a little hook and eye.  I got "The Tudor Tailor" and it said they didn't use plackets, so that saves some time!  I've also decided there probably won't be time to add more trim down the front of my jumper, but that's ok too.  I wore it as is already and it was fine.  Plus I'm worried that since the trim is lightly wired that it will make the skirt wonky if I sit down, then stand up.  So that cuts down the list a bit at least!

Ok, back to work!

Regency Musings

So, I'll need to put up pictures soon of the bib front Regency dress I started a couple months ago (first I need to actually take some!).  It was going to be for a Regency ball, but I ended up going to a Steampunk event that weekend instead, so I didn't finish it.  But I'm going to finish it for Costume Con and I have lots of scheming plans for it as well.

A few months ago, my favorite store for silks (Sewfisticated) had this gorgeous aqua silk.  Now, remember how I'd made a New Year's Resolution not to buy any fabric?  Well, I had been good and resisted the silk a couple weeks before, but when I went back and it was still there I had to buy just a yard.  I had to!  Turquoise and aqua are my colors!  It was screaming my name.  I couldn't resist the siren song.  So, I didn't know what I'd do with it at first, but I think when I got home I realized how perfectly it matched the tiny blue dots in my Regency dress.  So I thought, bonnet!  But then, I had an even better idea, last week.  I was already planning a couple of other bonnets, so why use this glorious fabric on just that?

The stripe is for the gathered crown of my bonnet! :)

So instead I'm going to make a little spencer!  The original plan was for short sleeves, but then I went and bought another yard (they still had it at the store!) and I'm thinking something like Lizzy Bennett's blue spencer from the good P&P.  It's either that or something like Jane's short sleeved one from that same movie.

I've found a few fashion plates with short sleeved spencers, but not in the exact style that I wanted, but I am totally drawn to these late 1790's plates.  I think I may take some of my cues from them.

1796 from here
labeled: a short-sleeved black bodice with black lace trim

1795 - its the one in the middle labeled:
Robe of coquelicot-coloured Irish poplin

from here

eta: I had the description wrong originally.  Since I can't see the back I'm not sure if this is more like a full open robe or just a short jacket.  Kinda interesting though!

So what do you guys think?  Short or long sleeved spencer?


All that's left to do on the dress is the sleeves and hem, but now I'm not totally happy with the bib front so I think I will redo that just a bit.  I think that will be pretty easy.  For sleeves I'm going to do a straight elbow length with the short puff sleeve spencer on top.


The other thing I need to do is create a better petticoat or bodiced petticoat and/or fix my short stays.  While I'm happy with how my long Regency stays turned out they are actually not the most comfortable thing to wear.  I made a short pair years ago from the Sense & Sensibility Simplicity pattern and they actually worked pretty well, but now they are far too big.  If I fix them I may just baste a "petticoat" to the bottom of them to make a little bodiced petti, we'll have to see.

All of this is time dependent.  I am so so busy it's not even funny.  I have so much to do and it's stressing me out.  Another problem is that I stay up until midnight getting stuff done and then when I try to go to sleep I can't shut my brain off worrying about getting everything done and so miss about an hour or so sleep at night.  It would be no use to try to be productive instead though.  *Sigh*  I just need to tell myself like I did while on study abroad in London that I can sleep in May.  Most of this stress will be over in May, let's not dwell on the fact that I'll have new deadlines at that point though...


Anyway, back to Regency plans!  I'm excited for how this ensemble is looking in my head at least!  Hopefully that will be realized in real life. :)