1920s Great Gatsby/Royal Ascot Dress

One of my many costuming goals for the year 2014 was to make an entire wardrobe of 1920s clothing.  I had watched Phryne Fisher wearing fabulous, flowing, fun, fine frocks on Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries and I was hooked on the 20s.  And why not?  The style is relatively simple to construct, the hats are FABULOUS and the style lends itself to "coolness" for the hot Idaho summers.  Well, as is the story of my life, differing forces decided to thwart my costuming desires and as of this date, I have only one 1920s dress for the year 2014.  Oh well.  I have lots of 20s fabrics and patterns in my sewing room for next year!

I was flooding my "1920s Fashion" Pinterest board with hundreds of images of hats, dresses, hair styles, shoes and coats, when I stumbled across this lovely frock.  My world stood still.  My eyes dialated.  My mouth went dry then instantly started salivating like Pavlov's Dog.  My creative juices started flowing in earnest and I felt the instant flash of lust and desire.  

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I don't know why I am so drawn to this dress.  I honestly don't!  It isn't heavily beaded.  It isn't over the top.  It isn't anything really super special.  It isn't even my favorite color for corn sakes!!  But my heart skips a beat everytime I see it!  

Here is the original in all its splendor.  It is from an online store called 1st Dibs.  I fell in love and so decided to make a similar dress.

Source:  1st Dibs

I love the color combination of black and yellow, but the black and white bead stripes were a little too much for me...

For Christmas, my Mother-in-Law gifted me with gift VISAs for fabric, so in January, I set off to JoAnn's.  They were having a clearance on many of the out of season special occasion fabrics and a wonderful maize yellow was among the colors.  

This was the perfect dress to make with my maize yellow crepe and chiffon!

The color is really washed out in the pictures...it is more vibrant in person.

To get the beading pattern, I enlarged the image of the original on my computer and traced it on computer paper.  When I got the size I liked, I cut it out and put on my dress.  I slipped the paper with the flower pattern under the chiffon layer and worked it around until it was at the right angle.  After I was got it to where I liked it, I pinned it down.  After taking the dress off, I then used a disappearing ink pen to trace the pattern to the chiffon!

The beads for the flower are small bugle beads. 

 I wanted a beaded rope necklace, but couldn't find one in my price range...liiiiiike This One.  I was at Walmart and discovered glass beads that closely resembled the beads in the original 1920s rope necklace!  Score!!!  I ran home with my newly acquired beads and went to work making my necklace!

The pattern I used for most of the dress.  The under dress is a simple slip/sheath.  I am thinking of making several for simple summer dresses.  It was very simple to put together.  I used the top of the dress from the pattern, leaving off the sleeves and scooping down the neckline.  The skirt of my dress I was my own "pattern".  It is two looooooong pieces of black chiffon cut at different lengths with a majority of the fabric gathered at the hips.  Then I cut a long piece of black chiffon for the belt/sash.

Because I will be wearing this to the Royal Ascot Tea at Costume College, I wanted a very wide brimmed cloche.  At the beginning of last year, I made a wide brimmed cloche for a lovely friend and copied the hat for myself before I sent hers off.  You can see the naked wire frame here.  Several years ago, I had purchased from eBay some fabulous antique horse hair and chenille millinery braid in black.  Now I finally had a chance to use it!  Laaaaaaaaa!!!!!  After spray painting the white wires of the brim's frame, I was ready to get started.  I have a Pinterest board of Wide Brimmed Cloches that fed my creativity and proved to me that they did use silk flowers on their hats and not just ribbon flowers!  Yeah!  This made me particularly happy because I had some fabulous flowers in my stach!  Daffodils, Ranunculus, Alstromerias, Sweet Peas and a Mum.  Antique flower happiness!!!

I wanted to create the look of flowers cascading out of a flower basket...

The Daffodils and Ranunculus make me super happy!

I originally wanted to just have the millinery braid for the crown of the hat, but it was too "squishy".  I ended up shortening the straw crown and slipping the stitched together braid over the top.

Close up of my braid.  It truly is fabulous.  

Tomorrow is the 3rd annual Great Gatsby Picnic that I will be attending in my sunny yellow flower dress.  I soooooo cannot wait to take it for it's maiden voyage!

Be Blessed my friends!

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