1800's British Uniform - Upgrade

Lady Catherine, the dress form, has once again graciously allowed me to put men's clothing on her. This time, it was for the 'upgraded' 1800's British Uniform. 

Remember this project?

It served its purpose well enough, but we (my brother and I) expected more from the basic red coat. It needed to something more. It needed... an upgrade.

(Sorry for the rather... geeky reference. It's all that I could think of. :P)

So to the dark corners of the interwebz I went. Do you know how hard it is to find resources and supplies for British military uniforms here in the States? But I found enough pictures, illustrations, and what-not to give me the information I needed. All of that turned into this:

Ta-da! Okay, it's not much, but it makes a difference, doesn't it? ;) 

All I did was:

- Add white piping to the front. Suddenly it became much more distinct. 

- Add piping and buttons to the back

- Extend the sleeves 3" by using the same black fabric as the collar (yay for fabric hoarding!)

- Add some gold couching to the cuff. Man, that is a beast of a project, but the results are very worth the effort.

- Add a stiff layer to behind the collar so that it doesn't flop over from the weight of the couching and buttons. You should have seen the looks on people as I worked on it in the lobby of the chiropractor's office. 'What are you making? That's something you don't see very day!' 

- Actually make button holes on... whatever that thing is called.The strappy dude that hold the other thing in place so that it doesn't slide down your shoulder. :P Part of me wants to call it a lapel.   

I will say, I'm rather excited with how it all turned out. ^_^ 

Here's my brother with one of the guests at the Civil War Ball that we attended. 

Until next time!

SG

A Civil War Ball

I promise I haven't fallen off the face of the earth! I meant to post this closer to the actual event, but things have been going non-stop for the last several weeks. I'm just now able to sit down and actually attempt to put together enough cohesive thoughts to write up a post. :P 

Anyways. Enough with the excuses and apologies. 

I finally got to wear my blue 1850's day dress! 

The Civil War ball was held at the historic mill in Salem - the perfect location for our event. 

I could live in a house like this.

:cough:

You came to read about sewing projects didn't you? ;) 

Fine...

Here's some pictures from the evening.

I was demonstrating how to do the 'Harriet Smith' pose

When the theme for the ball was announced, I knew exactly what I was going to wear. Especially since I never had an excuse to pull it out of the costume closet. But would it still fit as nicely as it did before? I tried the dress on, and lo-and-behold, it fit like a glove. ^_^ Since when does something not need alterations? Thank you, Victorian undergarments, for keeping my measurements the same. :P 

Since it was a bit of a drive to the venue, I changed into my dress there. I didn't want a squished and wrinkled dress when I got to the party. And I can't seem to drive with hoops and a corset. They make things rather... difficult. Ladies never drove the carriage; they were always along for the ride. I understand that now.

The only issue that I ran into during the evening was my corset... it twisted in the middle of the Grand March. Made it rather difficult to breathe for the rest of the evening. Little did I know what the contraption was up to until later when I changed into my jeans and t-shirt. So THAT'S why things were hurting! But beyond that, the dress worked like a charm!

After looking through pictures though, I'm seeing that I need to make a ruffled petticoat to help with my 'lampshade' skirt. And a bum-roll to kick out the back and show off the angles of the jacket. :adds two more projects to the ever growing to-do list:

Just some porch sitting

And some pictures from the dance 

The lovely Katrina in her Scarlet O'Hara gown. Her sewing blog can be found here. 

This is my favorite picture from the ball. Part of the dance involves turning the lady under, and I loved how the skirts were all swooshing and twirling. Lots of pink dresses, too, I've noticed. ;) 

I've got some more pictures to show you later, but this will do for now. 

Until next time!

SG

Throw-Back Thursday: 1860's Ball Gown

For the Victoria and Albert ball, it was black tie required. What's that? Since when in the Great Northwest did we ever have a black tie required? Oh well. It's a grand opportunity to get all gussied up in your finest to dance the night away. My only problem was that I didn't have a mid-1800's ball gown. But since the ball was still months away, I had time to plan. Rather, deliberate and be indecisive. I didn't know what I wanted my ballgown to look like. Now, keep in mind, this was before Pinterest became my favorite website, and I was relatively new to the whole historical fashion scene. Actually, I'm still pretty new, come to think of it. 

But I digress. After much wrestling with myself and no clear direction of what the dress should look like, I just let the thought sit for a while. A long while. Then, while helping my sisters clean off their bookshelves, I found a coloring book of Godey's fashions. After perusing the book, I found a skirt that I really liked. The rest of the dress then fell into place. I drew up a sketch that looked something like this to get the idea onto paper.

The it was onto color work. I'm not the hugest fan of pastels; part of that is that they make my face look absolutely drained of all life. Pastels do bad things to me. I tend to gravitate towards richer, more saturated colors. But those can look... drab. Do you see the conundrum that I was in? I wasn't able to find much inspiration in the colored pencil box either. :sigh: What's a girl to do?  Checked Joann's. Nothing (not a big surprise). I couldn't make it to the gigantic fabric store on the far, far side of town. A friend suggested that we look at a fabric store in her area. Okay. We'll give it a shot. 

Guess what. We walked in and saw the fabric right away. There it was, a gorgeous shantung in a rich shade of peacock teal. But what could you contrast such a strong color with? We meandered around the store and found a couple of options - a metallic gold shantung and some sheer cream with floral embroidery. We layered the sheer over the gold to tone down the shiny-ness of the metallic. 

I loved it. 

I had my dress! 

Just had to make it. ;) 

  Embellishing it was probably my favorite part of the entire sewing process. All those fabric flowers! I should have counted how many individual flowers I made to go on that dress. Ribbon flowers, flowers made from the scrap fabric, flowers with gold buttons, and flowers with pearls, cream flowers, teal flowers, gold flowers, light brown flowers, tiny yellow flowers. So many flowers! I just worked on them while watching TV in the evenings. After getting a garden's worth of florals all made up, I tacked them onto the dress and stepped back. 

:SQUEE!!!: It was better than I had imagined. And it was finished the night before the ball. 

The chair tried to eat me...

The ballroom

We even had live music for the dances!

That was all in the fall of 2011. Has it already been that long since that wonderful evening? 

Now, there's a 'Kings and Queens' ball quickly approaching, and I'm wondering if I should pull out the teal ball gown. After it's first wearing, I noticed a couple things that needed changing:

- The lace on the sleeves = no go. That will need to be delicately chopped off. 

- The skirt needs to be attached to the bodice so it doesn't twist around. Nothing that some hooks and eyes can't fix!

There is one snafu... The venue is a gym, yet there's no good place to get changed. Since there's room for my time travelling wardrobe, I'll have to get completely ready at home and drive to the ball in complete 1860's attire. It's one thing to drive with panniers; it's a completely different challenge to drive while wearing a hoop skirt. I'm sure that would be a first for the police officer. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but I'm going to need to you walk in a straight line and do a breath test. ... What are you wearing?" "I'm sober, officer. I just can't see anything below my waist." Now, to be completely honest with you, I have yet to be pulled over for a traffic violation, and I would like to keep it that way. 

Until next time! 

SG

Throwback Thursday: Mid-1800's British Uniform

With much gnashing of teeth, pulling of hair, staring at it awkwardly in fear, wracking my brain over how historically 'accurate' it is going to be, taking my brother shopping with me at the fabric store, some more staring, and going back to the store... oh you get the point. It took me almost a year to finish this coat. My brother asked me if I could make him a very specific coat (and this is coming from the guy who rarely asks for anything) - a British officer's uniform from the Zulu War. We worked out a trade, and I sorta set to work. It certainly ranks #1 hardest project I've ever done in my sewing career. I can point out all of the oops, shortcuts, the what-was-I-thinkings, and the 'that-shouldn't-have-worked-but-it-did-anyway.'  I've never done any sort of man's garment before, let alone a lined, tailored jacket! But I survived to sew another day. ^_^

The lo-down:

Pattern: McCalls 4745 (A)

Alterations:

- The pattern is originally drafted for American Civil War, not the British Zulu War. So the color is obviously different. ;)

- lapels on the shoulder drafted from one of my brother's trench coats

- gold braid and decorative buttons added to collar

- My brother has a very strong, athletic build, so, even with cutting it to his measurements, I had bring in the waist even more and put more ease into the shoulders.

Problems:

- The gathers on the sleeves weren't long enough per the instructions, so I had to spread the gathers out even farther.

- The coat tails... a living nightmare. I couldn't figure out the directions after studying it and rereading it. The pictures with the instructions hardly corresponded with what you were doing... I eventually wound up on a pattern review site and I went through everyone's suggestions on how they survived and managed to finish the coat. Those were life savers.

So the final verdict? Would I do it again? Eh... Maybe. :shrugs: Maybe if I can work up the courage to do it again. ;)

Now my brother just needs to find the hat, boots, accessories and what-not to make the whole outfit complete. Then we can get some better pictures with him all decked out in the apparel. My part of his ensemble is finished.

Until next time!

SG