(No) Commercial Patterns

Apparently the 18th-century "rococo" period is not really all that popular among amatuer/hobby-costumers. I say this because there are very few commercial patterns for the time period, and those that do exist are either full-on courtly formal sack dresses (pictured at right) or American Revolution styles that aren't at all what the French fashionistas were wearing. Or fashionistos, for that matter--I have yet to find a single men's costume that even remotely approaches what I need for his. This dearth of variety in women's costume is in English only...there is one German site that offers a wider variety of styles including the one I am making. But since I don't speak German, for my robe a la polonaise I instead have 3 different costume patterns that may or may not in the end contribute to my dress (one for the petticoat, one for the split skirt, one for the bodice and sleeves).


Essentially, then, I am designing my own. Okay, far, far, FAR from really, because I have 2 different books for each of us and a fabulous website that goes into a lot of detail about how to make the clothing of the time. It will be more useful for his, because the women's robe on that website is the sack dress most typical of the time, which is not what I'm making. But the site is where I'm getting my chemise and stays patterns, and taking her construction advice if not the pattern shapes for my dress. Her patterns are developed from old tailoring guides and museum pieces--which is pretty much the same (in the sense of equivalent, not the actual same) source material as the books I have are pulling from.


I'm both excited and terrified at the prospect of creating my own designs. Terrified because, going back to the whole, I'm a beginner and likely to have enough trouble putting real patterns together thing: what the fuck am I thinking?! Excited because, my dress will be completely and entirely customized to my figure, which is not at all in the standard way (broad shoulders, high waist, large-boned and heavy-muscled, long-limbed without the attendent lankiness), and because when I've daydreamed about making costumes it's designing my own fanciful shit and then realizing it, not just placidly recreating someone else's daydream.


I've taken as many screen-shots off Stanze's dress as I can to see how they seamed it, and I'm planning to draw out a to-scale view of my own body and use my math skillz to measure out each seam relative to my size. I never thought I'd be combining both my Art I class with arithmetic, but trust me to find a way, lol. At least I have experience blowing things up from a small scale to a large on a grid, thanks to a couple different Art I projects, and I have enough skill with a pencil to draw the lines right. I'll have to do it blowing up the patterns from the book(s)/website for his, anyway, so it's not actually that far a stretch to staring at how the costumer for the movie put Stanze's bodice together and then copying it onto paper.


...Right?

Chemise - Part 1

The chemise (shift) is the most basic and most under of undergarments for women of the time period. (And a lot of others. They get taken off a lot in historical romance novels, lol.) It is worn underneath the stays, against the skin, to both absorb sweat so the stays don't need to be washed--only aired--and to prevent the possibly rougher fabric of the stays from chafing the skin.

I am using for my chemise a basic pattern, and sewing it completely by hand in order to practice stitches and get a feel for how long things take. Material is white cotton broadcloth, very thin and frays ridiculously, but also--very thin. If my nipples object after a practice wear I might swap out the bodice for a softer fabric, but I was mostly going for expediency and affordability in case I had to start over from scratch because I irretrievably fucked something up. In terms of material length, it is coming to my knees; I bought 3 yards of fabric, which was really about a yard too much, so now I've got extra patterning material.

What I have learned so far: sewing is not intuitive for me. I have managed, in the process of attaching the sleeves (and thus far only the sleeves!) to:

• sew one sleeve completely shut whilst trying to affix the underarm gusset
• sew one sleeve into the shoulder inside out
• Fail to sew the opposite sleeve onto the shoulder in the same way despite attempting to do so
• Not realize when I had sewed the sleeve on as I wanted to

Clearly I will have to pay strict attention to rules and not try to visualize things, because that doesn't work for me. Clearly.

I am undaunted by this fact. There are a lot of things in life that are counterintuitive until you really understand how they work. Also, knowing is half the battle--and now I know. It's much better for me to make this kind of mistake on the garment no one will see than on my actual dress, for so many reasons. Well, okay, just two--no one will see it, and this material is cheap enough and readily available enough that if it wasn't fixable I could buy more, unlike my silks. Thus why I'm starting with my chemise.

I just got my deadline for it today, too: the materials I am still lacking for sewing my stays and hoops--basically, the boning--are en route via UPS with an ETA of Monday July 26. Good thing I can hand sew in front of the TV!

Note: I will post pictures of each stage of the process once I've finished it, so keep an eye out for "Chemise - Part 2" hopefully by the end of the weekend!

Complete Dossier

Before I start into posts specific to individual pieces of this project, I thought it might be fun for any of you who are keeping track of my progress to know exactly what I've gone on the table. So here it is, my rococo dressing list:

His

• Pants (knee breeches)
• Waistcoat
• Jacket (justaucorps, and God do I love that word for it)
• Shirt
• Stock

Mine

• Chemise
• Stays (corset, but the term for the period is stays)
• Pocket hoops (AKA considérations)
• Petticoat (and possibly also and under-petticoat, depending on how it drapes over the hoops)
• Dress, meaning bodice and overskirt
• Fichu
• Sash

We will be acquiring from outside sources the following items:

• His tricorner
• My awesome, totally-gonna-win-the-Derby-Day-competition hat
• His wig
• Shoes for both of us
• Stockings for both of us

We already know where we're commissioning my hat from, but the others are still at large. (So if any of you happen to know where we can get high quality historical reproductions, please chime in, lol.)

So there it is. I currently have seven months to finish everything. Let's hope I don't need to start wishing he proposed even sooner!

My Mardi Gras Wedding

I am getting married on Tuesday, March 8, 2011. For most of America, that date will have a vague significance of "Fat Tuesday" only because it is the day before Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. Few places actually celebrate Mardi Gras for itself. I happen to live in one of them. And, yes, I'm getting married right in the thick of it.

We didn't choose the date in spite of the holiday; we chose it because of the holiday. We're not native to this region, but since we moved here, Mardi Gras has become our favorite season. We love the revelry, and the excitement, and the community, and the craziness. The costumes. The fact that he'll be able to remember our anniversary (because we're calling Mardi Gras Day our anniversary, whenever it falls on the calendar), which will make our anniversary more special to him, for falling on his favorite holiday. The obvious truth that when we have an anniversary to celebrate, we can go somewhere really fantastic and watch their Mardi Gras--Rio, Venice, Paris.

We are getting into the spirit of the holiday with our wedding plans. The guest list is limited to immediate family and closest friends; basically the people who know us best and won't merely not judge us for getting married by a man dressed as Jean Lafitte and quite possibly still drunk from the night before, but will in fact actively enjoy such a scene. I've probably offended 2/3 of my family by doing this, and a good many friends as well, but ultimately we want a day that truly celebrates us. Having a family reunion with all its inherent awkardness, or the attendent stress of trying to catch up with friends we haven't seen since college, seemed like it would only detract from that celebration. Also, if we had more than 40 guests, we couldn't use the only space we could find that didn't require us to either belong to the church or take 10 weeks of premarital counseling. (We've been together for nearly 8 years; we know this is for the rest of our lives.) We're also getting into the revelry of Mardi Gras in our theme: it's not a Mardi Gras wedding, it's a masquerade wedding.

Here's how that happened. I warned him, when we moved here, that I was going to start making costumes like crazy, because I have always loved playing dress-up for Halloween, the Renaissance Festival, anything. He said "okay" and moved me here anyway; then he said, "I've always wanted to have a few styles so if you get good at sewing can you make me...?" One of those styles was 18th century gentleman--basically, Mozart from the movie Amadeus. His purple and gold get-up, so it could be worn tailgating at LSU games.







I love Stanze's matching day dress (see my profile picture). We've been daydreaming of wearing such full-on period clothes from Louisiana's founding years, complete with paniers for me and a white wig for him, since we lived in Baton Rouge. So when we finally decided to get married, and we were searching for something that would be meaningful to him so the day wasn't just for me, and settled on Mardi Gras, it seemed very logical to add costumes. And to add, specifically, those costumes. If they're done right, they will provide us years of enjoyment with tailgating and parading on Mardi Gras Day--and every additional wearing is both a reminder of our wedding day, and a justification of whatever it costs to make them, versus a dress that I wear literally once in my lifetime and then leave to rot in a closet or a box with scented sachets in the attic.

We're pretty laid-back, low-key people, so our wedding plans are simple. We're not bothering with flowers, as the space is already decorated with antiques (maximum decoration on our part might be providing tulle for them to drape over the ceiling to cover their Vegas-wedding-shack style dollar bills); we have 13 households getting my self-designed and home-printed invitations and a current maximum of 35 guests, so even if it goes up a few people it's still within our 40; we're not doing a formal reception but champagne and cake right after the ceremony to end our formal revels; then we and anyone who wants to come are going to second-line out of the chapel and into the hysteria of Mardi Gras Day in the French Quarter and party till the police drive everyone out at midnight.

This blog is meant to be a place for me to express my frustrations, anxieties, triumphs, and challenges throughout the planning and executing process. It will for the most part be about my sewing projects, as that is the bulk of my time and energy in this whole scenario, but I will occasionally talk about the other parts. And I will probably include headless photos for those of my friends (all of you, lol) who are not here to help me drape or fit or cut, or to laugh at me when I bring a piece of my dress out with me to the bar on Saturday afternoon to sew away at what can only be accomplished by hand while we sip our sweating drinks and watch the river roll.

If I don't know you, feel free to take this journey with me. I'm chronicling it as much to help me keep track of my rookie costuming mistakes as to help me remember my wedding planning with clarity; perhaps one track, or the other, of my learning curve can help you on your own journey. And if I do know you, thanks for caring enough to come by!