Sunday, December 25, 2011

Titanic Gown -- And Away We Go...

So I wimped out and took the bodice pieces to the blueprint shop and had them scaled up, took just a few minutes for them to do it and saved me HOURS of drafting time.   So I had actual paper pattern pieces then drafted the skirt pieces by myself.  I've discovered that the heavy roll of painters paper makes fantastic pattern paper!  I can't really do much until the corset is done but I can get a general jist of how things are going to go.  Thankfully it appears that the dress will be close to my own dress size--something that seems a bit odd since dresses of the period are usually so much smaller.




I've included a picture of the wedding dress I'm picking apart so  you can see the lace, in a way it already has the silhouette of a period gown.  One shot is a close of up of the netting.  I think I found a the fabric for the underskirt...it is a light green silk taffeta that is shot with a pinkish orange...but I'm still looking.  Part of the colour choice is the price at the discount fabric store.  More photos to follow.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Corsets Corsets Corsets...


12/04/11
I think I found "the dress" to reproduce (different from my original idea of using a Laughing Moon pattern) , of course it will be different than the picture below, and will be a few years out of fashion for 1912 (the dress will be a 1910 model) but I will need the right undergarments.  A fellow guild member has kindly offered to draft up her pattern in my size and I'm going to give it a go.  I'm so excited.  The corset will have to be done before I really start the dress but I can work on the dress mock up in the mean time.  Here is the dress I want to make, the design will be completely different since I will be using the wedding dress lace but this is the shape:





This dress is from Jane Arnold's book Patterns of Fashion -2.  Not sure what colour I will use, but the lace is a soft white.

Here are examples of the correct long line corset to be worn under this style.  Very different from the Victorian or S-curve of the early Edwardian period:








You can see that some styles have garters to hold up stockings.  Now just for eye candy, I found this dress: