1830s Wedding Dress

Good Sunday to you all!  I hope that your week is going wonderfully!  Mine has been great so far!

The last post I wrote was about the "Dressing The Historical Bride" fashion show and tea, highlighting 5 unique silhouettes from 5 different clothing eras.  Today I want to share with you the 1836 wedding dress that I made and the Augusta Auctions Dress that I used as inspiration!  I emailed Augusta Auctions and Karen Augusta gave me permission to use the photos of the phenomenal, incredible, over-the-top dress found on her website:  Augusta Auctions.  Thank you so much for allowing me to use this fantastic dress and the images in the making of my own 1830s dress!!

I have for quite some time wanted to make a crazy, ridiculous, huge sleeved 1830s dress.  I also knew that I wanted a fabric with a texture on it and not just a plain satin fabric.  While mom and I were visiting my brother and his family in Spokane Valley, I stopped by a JoAnn's and low and behold this incredibly beautiful brocade jumped off the shelves and wrestled me to the ground screaming for me to buy the bolt and take it home.  I agreed with the crazy, customer attacking fabric and purchased it...oh, and I could use my 60% off coupon!  Huzzaaaaaah!!!  It made my magpie heart happy.  Now all I needed was the perfect dress to copy!  After hours and hours of searching Pinterest, my eyes beheld the most gorgeous 1830s wedding dress I had ever seen!  First of all.....PLEATS!!!  Secondly, although I had never given oak tree leaves any thought other than thinking they were super cool, this dress had two huge oak leaves framing the pleating on the bodice.  The more I looked at the dress, the more my eyes dilated, the more I salivated, the more I got excited, the more I HAD to make it!!!  The fussiness of the whole thing just really captured my crazy fashion loving heart!

Here she is in all her 1830s glory!!!  Don't know when I'll get the chance to wear it myself, but I hope that day is soon!!!

Some construction images...

I foolishly thought that this dress would be a super quick make.  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

That was the most hilarious thing I had talked myself into believing for a very, very long time.  I don't know how long it took, but I can say that during the making of the three dresses that I needed to round out the program (1836, 1856, 1920's), I finished all 10 seasons of "CSI: Miami".  That would be 232 episodes that averaged 43 minutes a piece for a total 9,976 minutes or 166 hours.  Throw in the random "Cranford", some "Call the Midwife", "Manoa", and I started "CSI:Crime Scene Investigation".  All I know is that making the whole dress was a colossal consumer of time.

The pleating was particularly a pain in the rear.  The panel was too wide to use my perfect pleater, so I had so measure, mark and pleat each individual pleat, one at a time.  

I did have to cheat a little and serge the edges of the oak leaves because the fabric was wretchedly ravvely.  Ravelly....It unraveled a whole lot!!! 

This is why I haven't ever made a set of 1770s stays.  Hand sewing the binding around the edges and the inside curves was a pain!!!  Each long oak leaf and the bow took a day each to sew!  ACK!!!!!

Soooooooo many pins!!!!

I ended up cutting a whole bunch of the painstakingly pleated panel off on the sides....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.........

 

I then had to hand sew along both sided of the piping that was down the center of the oak leaves to make sure they didn't shift.  That was fun....

 

Ready to sew onto the dress!!!

Well, I can now say that I have an 1830s wedding dress in my costuming collection and for some reason that makes me giddy with delight!

I hope you all have a wonderful last week of September!  I can't believe how fast time is flying by!

Blessings!

g

Hair Ornaments for the Countess Emilia Sommariva Seilliere Portrait Dress

Hello lovely readers!  I know this is waaaay past a Thursday Throw Back post, but I have been super busy making a Natural Form Era wedding dress for a lovely young friend of mine...so haven't had much time to really think about doing a blog post.  A friend on Facebook reminded me about the acorn hair ornaments that I made for the Countess Emilia Sommariva Seilliere portrait dress and that lead me to remember that I was going to write a post about how I made said acorn ornaments.

I had spent several days pouring over the internet, eBay, Etsy, The Find, trying to find acorn hair ornaments, combs, brooches, ANYTHING that I could use to put in my hair like the Countess had done for her hair.  After I resigned myself to the fact that there quite possibly would never be found such objects, I went about trying to decide how to make them myself.

Challenge accepted!!!!!  I was in JoAnn's with two lovely friends, Marilyn and Aubrielle one evening and I told them what I was hoping to find and they joined in the search.  I think they caught the "hunting for a project" bug and had a fabulous time!  Between the three of us, we came up with all the ingredients for the acorns!!!

In the end, they were super easy to make and looked rather good I think!

Acorn Hair Ornaments up close and personal.....

I used the largest beads from this packet, they were about 2cm.

Awesome metal bead caps....

Gold tone 12 ga. wire...

4mm gold crimp covers...

And gold spray paint to paint the metal bead caps.

The one on the left has been spray painted gold....

For construction, I cut the wire into 12" lengths, crimped a crimp cover at the very end of one end (I used needle nose pliers to crimp them down good and tight), added a bead, then a bead cap, then crimped another crimp cover right snug up under the bead cap!  

Taaaaa Daaaaaa!!!  Easy Peasy, Rice and Cheesy!!!

Finished Acorn ornaments!

To affix them to my wig that my fabulous friend Josie's mom styled for me, Josie formed a circle in the wire as the wire was super slick in my hair and wouldn't stay put without it.  All that was left was for her to bobby pin the circle to the wig and Voila!!!  Hair accessories complete!!  (Josie is a rock star!!!)

So, there you go.  Super easy hair ornament tutorial...you could do this with so many fun things, not just round beads....

Be blessed my friends!!

g

Autumn in Cranford: Dress Done!!!

Whoo hoo!!!  The dress is done!  And shockingly without any horrific mishaps that usually hover like a spector of doom and despair around my projects.  I'm kind of scared.  I didn't have to adjust or alter the pattern one bit and that is seriously unusual for me.  BUT, this is a happy event, because this means I can make more of this dress without any of the usual hair pulling that often times accompanies my projects!

On to the dress-rehearsal pictures!!  (The pics of me wearing the dress were taken before I made the sleeve supports, so the sleeves look like sad, deflating balloons...)

Note to self:  Get a new camera that doesn't make fabric look washed out....

I cannot believe the enormity of the sleeves and bonnet!!!  I acutally look like I have a small head!  Which I DON'T!!!!

My Mrs. Universe pose!!  Look at those "muscles"!!  hahahahahaha!!!!

Miss Rosie had to get in the picture.  She does after all match the outfit!!  Isn't she so sweet?

Ok!  So, I found on eBay from England this fabulous lace pelerine and my Mama bought it for me for a birthday gift!!  It is gorgeous and I may be wearing it instead of the chemisette I originally planned on wearing with the dress....hhhmmm.....Oh yes!  Sleeve supports have been added so the sleeves puff out correctly!

Love how the pelerine looks with this dress...

Dress with the chemisette...love this look as well...

Close up of bodice with chemisette...now the decision of what collar to wear!!!

Next post will be about the accessories I have for this outfit!!  I am so excited to wear it!!

Be blessed my friends!

g

Costume College: Friday Night Ice Cream Social, A Dress From A Portrait

The theme for Friday night's Ice Cream Social was "Ice".  I thought that since icebergs have a lovely shade of blue in them many times, that I could wear my blue 1830s portrait dress!  Josie's Mom, Greeneyed Nana, styled a wig for me and it turned out fabulously!!  I made some hair ornaments like the Countess Emilia Sommariva Seilliere wore in her painting.

Again, I will share my Friday Evening, Ice Cream Social album with you as there are so many photos of fabulous dresses!

Two images of me trying to get the same pose as the Countess.  The one on the left is the right body pose, but my hair needs bangs...the one on the right has the right bangs but my body isn't right!  Hahahaha!!  Josie did a great job posing me, don't you think?

 

Nice view of my hair ornaments and Greeneyed Nana's fabulous wig!  Thank you for helping out with the ornaments and the extra braid Josie!

Yeah for wonderful black fur tippets and jewelry!

I starched my corded and plain petticoats.  Oh man were they stiff when they were dry!  It took me over an hour to iron them out and in the end my the shoulder and bicep of my right arm were exceedingly grouchy with me!

This is a wonderful shot of the pleating on the back of my skirt and the back of my hair.  I decided to do spiral lacing for the closure.

To keep the sleeves in their beret shape, I made circles of hoop boning and sewed them to the netting on the inside of sleeve.