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

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.

1830s Fur Tippet Mini Tutorial and a Completed 1830s Bracelet

For my 1830s Painting Dress, I wanted to make a black fur tippet like Countess Emilia Sommariva Seilliere in her painting.  I watched eBay for quite a while looking for a vintage cape that didn't cost an arm and a leg and finally discovered the one below.  It pays to buy vintage furs in the summer when the last thing one wants to do is wear a fur...at least in Idaho where it can get to 105!  ACK!!  Anyhoo, I was able to recycle a 1940s cape into an 1830s tippet!  In my mind the lady who wore this cape was a very lovely lady who wore it on an airplane while on her honeymoon to England to visit Bath or the V&A Museum!  Ok, so my imagination is a bit wild!

My fur cape from eBay.  It is dyed and sheared muskrat.  I took the lining and padding out and layed it flat.  As with other fur, it had many pieces stitched together to get one big piece.

I decided that I wanted my tippet to be 3" wide, so cut strips of 6" fur.  Happily, the makers of the cape had sewn together 6" strips already so it was rather simple to cut apart.  I used an Xacto knife very gingerly on the back side to cut the strips apart.  When I had all my strips cut apart, I began sewing it together.

I layed the strips down and butted the pieces together.  I hope you can see it here... black thread on black leather is kind of hard to see.

After all the strips were sewn together I folded it in half and whip stitched the long pieces together forming a looooong tube.  Then I turned it right side out...which took about 45 minutes...I'm not even kidding you!

My beautiful tippet complete and hanging on the dress that it goes with!

I think it is just the right size for the painting reproduction!

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Another thing that has to be done for the painting reproduction is the jewelry...the bracelet in particular.

Remember the brooch I found on eBay?  No?  Ok, well it is above...I removed the pin part of the brooch with a pair of side cutters or dykes.

I found a pair of curved earrings at Hobby Lobby.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of them before I cut off the ear hole loops.  Grrrrrrrr...I chose these earrings because they had a curve to them that the straight bars did not have.  I used super glue to attach them to the brooch.

These are the beads that I used for the bracelet part of the bracelet!  Ha!!

The completed bracelet.

Next up...make the necklace for the outfit, then I shall be complete!  Huzzah!!

Blessings to all of you!  And if you are reading this from the United States, I hope you have a most wonderful Independence Day tomorrow!

g

How to Closely Recreate an 1830s Portrait of a Countess

I have had a love affair with the Romantic Era (roughly 1825-1835) since I watched Cranford and  Wives and Daughters.  It was shortly after I started costuming, around 2004, and at the time I was known as "The '90s Girl" among my costuming and SASS (Single Action Shooting Society) peers.  I adored the huge Leg-o-Mutton sleeves, wide skirts, top knot hair style and fabulously large hats that were found from 1895-1896.  So, it would only stand to reason that I would also adore the dresses from an era that was around 60 years older.  The similarity between the two silhouettes is just plain crazy.  Unfortunately, I didn't have any reason or need to create such a wonderful ensemble.  The years that SASS encompassed was from the 1860s to the 1890s and wanting to be era correct for this sport, decided to not make a dress from waaaaaay earlier.

Enter Costume College 2014.  I finally have a place to wear a fabulous dress from 1833.  The image I settled on to loosely copy was a painting of the Countess Emilia Sommariva Seillere painted by Boisfremont Charles de Boulanger.  About a year ago, I found the image on Pinterest and fell head over heals in love with it.  

Lauren from American Duchess helped me out with the legal aspect of copying images off of the internet to my blog and found some wonderful images of the portrait.  One of the images was from Getty Images.  I wrote Getty and asked permission to post the image to my blog and they wrote back telling me that there was a new "Embed" feature on the site.  I was so excited!  I could show you an image of the portrait and be legal at the same time.  I followed the instructions to the letter, only to find out that this particular image was not on the new "Embed" list....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-ness!!!  So.....until I can find an image that I can copy and use here, I will have to just offer links for you to use.  Thank you so much Lauren!

Here is the fabulous portrait of the Countess!

Countess Emilia Sommariva Seillere

and another one.  The details of the painting are so clear in this one..

Yooniq Images

I love everything about this portrait.  From the Countess's sweet face to the fur tippet draped across her shoulders.  She is even reading a book!  Or at least holding it in an open position.  I had some dupioni silk in my stash the exact same color as her gown.  I read on a blog that had this image posted that the dress may have been made of velvet, but I had the silk and would use it.  

Since I adore accesories of all kinds when loosely recreating a dress, I set about finding accessories that might work for this project.  Ebay and one of  my local antiques stores came to my rescue.  

For the brooch that is seen at the top of the Countess's bodice, I found this one on Ebay:

The antique store had this buckle waiting for me:

Here is a wonderful closeup from Getty Images:

Detail of Belt and Belt Buckle

For the bracelet, I didn't even bother looking for one that would be similar.  I figured my time would be better spent Frankensteining my own.  Back to Ebay I went.  I typed in a search for "large black stone brooch"  and this is what I found:

Close-up of braclelt from Getty:

Detail of Fabulous bracelet

Now, in the "better" images of the portrait, it shows the stone in the bracelet to be a dark red.  Since I had already purchased the black stoned brooch, I have decided to go ahead and use it. I like the use of black accessories anyway, so it will be fine.  I have purchased black glass beads for the 3 string necklace and earrings and will be making a black fur tippet out of a vintage fur coat.  The bracelet, necklace and tippet will be constructed in the near future...

Now on to the dress itself.  As I said, I already had the silk for it, so only needed to find the correct pattern to make it from.  Enter Truly Victorian.  Heather had the perfect pattern available:  TV 455 Romantic Era Dress.  I have to say that this pattern was perfect.  I didn't have to mutate anything to get the shape I wanted!!!  Huzzah and away!  Will wonders never cease?  I did pleat the skirt into the waist band instead of gathering it as that is how the Countess's skirt was attached.  I apologize for not taking any construction pictures.  I was in the middle of a get-this-dress-done-before-school-gets-out binge and was furiously sewing.  But as I said, the pattern was straight forward and didn't require any adjusting!

Picutres!  Keep in mind that the dress fits quite ill on Emma as she is thin and has no legs so the dress falls a bit flat....

Poor Emma needs to gain some weight!  hahahahaha!

The sleeves are going to need some sort of support...still looking into that.  I don't want the cute round sleeve supporters as the sleeves in the portrait are more saucer shaped than round.

For the back closure, I wanted it to lace up.  I am having difficulty finding ribbon that matches the silk.  Thankfully, I have a while yet to search!

My first time ever making and using piping!  It was quite simple and I think I did rather well!

My hand sewn grommets.  The only sewing that I have done that is era correct...honestly, I don not have time to make a dress all hand stitched....

Up next for this ensemble:  Make the bracelet, necklace and earrings.  Take a part a vintage black fur coat to make the tippet.  Find some poppy pods to spray paint gold for my hair!

Here are some more images that American Duchess found for me.

From Age Foto Stock

You can see a lot of wonderful detail in this image.  For instance the Countess's poppy pods are two toned, and the belt of the dress is a figured pattern on it!

Original portrait from the Gallery of Modern Art in Milano

I think that this portrait should come home to my house!!  It is so gorgeous!

Well, I am taking today off to rest and make cookies!  I hope your day finds you happy, blessed and refreshed!

Blessings!

g