White Edwardian Hat of Fluffiness and Corset Cover of Ridiculousness!!!

Today, Mom and I did a "Pantaloons to Parasol" underwear show for a local ladies group and I decided that I needed to do a dress rehearsal of the Clara L. Campbell outfit.  I am happy to say that this outfit is now my most favorite outfit!!  Well, except the 1886 sailor dress.  BUT after that, this one is it!!  It is so utterly ridiculous that I adore it whole heartedly!!!  

The Hat

First off is the HUGE hat of fluffiness.  For this outfit, I wanted one of the large, ridiculous, wire framed hats of confectionery goodness.  A bit of research and I found a hat that screamed "MAKE ME MORTAL!!!"  As always, I obeyed my muse and the following is what came to be!

The hat is super hard to photograph as the white likes to wreak havoc.  It isn't white white like my tucked blouse, but a very muted off white.  I had some large, antique, off white ostrich plumes that I washed (Ohmygosh, talk about having a heart attack while watching the fluffy goodness be reduced to a mass of sad wetness.....).  They had to be washed, as they were exceedingly dirty and smelled like the dump.  Gross.  Anyhoo, they recovered nicely and after being dried and then steamed , they fluffed back up to their happy glory!  The lace is antique bobbin lace and the fluted chiffon lace is antique as well.  The flowers are a combination of vintage and antique silk and velvet!  The ivory and pink bows are silk.

Inspiration hat.  Can you hear it screaming to me!?  It was so loud and clear it was quite scary!!!

Fashion plate from 1902.

Source:  A Victorian Passage.  The description from the magazine is wonderful!

I didn't have enough of the small pink flowers to sew all the way round the underside of the brim, so had to settle with just the little bit I had.

Love the crazy, off kilter, tilt of this hat!

Huzzah!  Shock of all shocks I finished the inside of the hat!!!

The Corset Cover

The blouse of my outfit needed assistance with keeping itself inflated, so I was "forced" to make a ruffled corset cover from Truly Victorian TVE02.  Can I just say that this corset cover fills my geeky heart with such joy?  It is fluffy and huge and utterly ridiculous!  I LOVE that sort of thing!  It does its job wonderfully and keeps the front of my blouse inflated and all pouter looking!

I used antique lace for the edges of the ruffles and decided to close it with hooks and bars.  Sometimes my sewing machine throws a fit while making button holes and I didn't want the head ache!

Look at that fluff!!!  To quote Agnes from Despicable Me "It's so fluffy I'm gonna die!!!"

Yes, exactly Agnes!!!

Now that is some fluff!!

 

Filling out the front of that blouse quite nicely!!!

Mom took a few pictures of me in the dress after the program, but the light and the white were so not cooperating.  I am going to have some pictures taken at the capitol building on Monday where the light will be more diffused and will more than likely make for better pictures!  But here is one for now!!

Hopefully I can get a suffragist sash made before Monday....that's one thing on the "to do next" list!!

Be blessed my friends!!

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In Which I Wear My 1920s Dress...

Yesterday, I got to go to 3rd Annual Great Gatsby Picnic hosted by Ken and Suzanne Comontofski of Style in Time costuming group.  It was such a wonderfully fun time, not to mention a time of peace and tranquility.  The weather was lovely, not to hot, not too cold thanks to the wonderful breeze that lent itself to the afternoon.

For my hair for this day, I did some research to see what medium length hair was styled like.  I found many examples of curled hair as opposed to the Marcel Wave and the straight bob with the cute little swoop of hair at the cheek bone.  I was so happy that I found it because I was entertaining a hair cut (like when I first cut my long hair in the fashion of The Honorable Phryne Fisher), but Pinterest saved me again!!!

Before I went to the picnic, I went to Mom and Dad's farm so that my Mama could take some pictures of me wearing my new ensemble with her awesome sauce camera!  I keep trying to abscond with her camera, but she keeps thwarting my efforts...So, here they are.  Mom is such a wonderful photographer and did a great job making me look pretty!  Thanks Mama!

I photo shopped some of my pics to make them look a little more vintage.....

Dancing...no.  Posing...yes!

Mom said, "Get a stick and play in the water..." I was like, "Are you crazy?"  But as usual, Mama knows best and the pictures actually turned out great!  We both almost ended up in the stream when she helped me up from this position!  hahahahahahaha!!!

Bravely fording the stream....No, I didn't fall in!

Now for the photoshopped "Vintage" images.  I love looking at the pictures from the 1920s.  They did some really silly poses that actually look good!  I tried to emulate those poses...some of them looked absolutely ridiculous and some of them turned out good!

Introducing, Gina the Starlette!

Inspiration: Marion Davies

Lovely Lady

I love this one...I look super young in it!

Inspiration: Esther Ralston

The pictures take at the event can be seen on the We Wear History facebook page....

Here

I hope you all have a most wonderful Sunady!  I am off to church then home to make sour cherry jam!!! mmmmmmmmmmm...delicious!

Blessings!

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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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