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!

Hand Sewing

I am not exactly an ace with a sewing machine. I have had one for at most six months—less if you count from the time I actually took it out of the box. I have yet to complete a garment using it. (Although, I have started a simple dress. And actually now that I say that, I remember I have sewn one thing, a basic slip of 2 pieces of cloth that I literally put two seams in and hemmed. Added the button—and buttonhole—by hand.)

Using my machine isn’t hard, exactly; but I find that my level of precision is, well, vague, at best.

So when I saw on the main website I am using as my resource guide for this project a page about hand sewing that amounted to a challenge—Why not try it? It’s more authentic and it might be easier than you think!—I didn’t take it as a challenge. I took it as a safety net. “Why NOT try it?” I thought. I mean, I’m not planning to be stupid-dedicated to hand sewing for the sake of hand sewing. I don’t expect that I’ll actually be willing to, say, blind-hem stitch a 6-yard hem on my petticoat. (Note: I will if the blind-hem stitch feature on my machine sucks. I am that much of a perfectionist. But I’m trying the machine first on that hem!)

But. I’m not going to force myself to machine everything but the most complex of seams, either. In fact, I’m likely going to sew more by hand than with my Brother.

Why? Because, frankly, I’m more confident sewing by hand. It's the only way I've ever sewn, what little sewing I've actually done (mending and buttonholes, and the occasional replacement hem). But I am comfortable doing it, which is apparently more than many people who learn by machine-sewing. My hand-sewn stitches may not be the prettiest, but they are sturdy—and most of the time they won’t be seen, anyway. More importantly—well, equally importantly with the fact that not too many of them will be seen, because there is a serious aesthetic consideration in all of this—I know they will be right. I can be precise with my hands in a way that I am not sure I can be yet with my machine.

It’s kind of a vicious overlap: I’ll never get precise enough with my machine if I don’t practice, and yet I’m not willing to risk a costume of this level of importance to practice. Perhaps if I make it to the Renaissance Festival this year, with enough advance planning to make costume(s). I could do some simple dress(es) for that, and use only the machine except for the things not even experts would machine, and learn.

And in the meantime, I’m just planning to hand sew everything but the longest, most simple of the seams and hems. I’m starting by making my chemise entirely by hand, to get my stitching in top form and to get a time estimate for how long each piece will take…but that’s another post!

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!

On Materials and Mood Fabrics

I'm not sure if it's a universal piece of advice, but from everything that I've seen on websites about sewing and from everything I've heard from people I know who do it, the cardinal rule for beginners seems to be "don't choose a project that's too hard for your skill set." Basically the opposite of my intentions with this costume project, which is clearly Go Big Or Go Home.

I am essentially a novice at sewing. My godmother used to sew, and I helped her make me a Renaissance Fair dress one fall when I was in high school--by help I mean I cut the pieces and did the hand-finishing, and watched her do the machine sewing--but that's as close as I've ever been to a project of this scope. I can re-attach buttons in a way that they aren't coming off even in a knife-fight, and I have hand-hemmed pants that I decided to make into capris, and mended rips in a shirt. And that's actually been it for me for sewing. But I have always wanted to have the skills and equipment to make fabulous outfits for Occasions, so this wedding project is just an impetus to jumpstart this idealized passion into an actual hobby. Also, I watch a lot of Project Runway, and if those people have learned how to sew and design, there's no way I can't, as well. I am a smart girl, and not entirely tactiley helpless. I understand there will be a learning curve, but I also believe I have enough tenacity, exposure if not experience, and common sense to make it through with an outcome I am proud of.

One thing I am hell-bent on is making sure that, beginner or not, these costumes look nice. By that, I suppose I mean luxe. The one costume wedding I've witnessed had a dress that, while lovely, looked, well, like polyester. (You're looking at the lady in red on the right. She was the bride--we just happened to be outside the bar when their pirate wedding, complete with Naval chaplain and crossed-sword salute, sprung up around us. I daresay watching this charming and casual proceeding may have planted the germ of our own wedding theme two years ago.)

I don't want to look like I'm in a modern fabric aping (poorly) the finery of yesteryear. These are both our wedding clothes and costumes that we intend to use for years; we want them to be right. So it was frustrating to me to go to the local fabric stores and come up empty-handed because they had nothing like what I was looking for, and realize that I would have to go elsewhere for my needs. Which seems impossible in a city like New Orleans, that there is not a great fabric store here. Note: There is an upscale fabric shop I have not visited, mostly because their prices are high and I had an opportunity to go to New York. I will at some point check them out and see whether they are worth frequenting for later projects/emergency replacements.

So instead of buying cheap fabric, going on the internet and buying what I could only hope were the right colors and fabric weights, or getting gouged for it, I went--as I mentioned--to The City (as all the people I met in Jersey, where I was staying, kept calling it) and, like any good PR junkie, went to Mood Fabrics.

That was a fabulous experience! The building was hilariously obscure--all it had was the address, no sign that it was a business building as opposed to apartments, nothing on the wall outside; obviously the building shot on the show is from the LA location! If you didn't know it was there, like if you just went to the Garment District and thought you could stumble onto it, you can't. Plenty of other stores, yes, and next time I go to NYC and have a couple hours to kill maybe I'll explore some of the many, many other fabric stores I passed. But Mood? You have to know it's there. Since I had the address, I walked right in and only stopped to verify with the business sign discreetly on the wall that I was in the right place before ringing for the elevator. The elevator man (WTF, right? EXACTLY) took me right to the third floor, and the staff on the floor left me alone until I had stopped wandering from section to section and started pulling out fabrics to compare. The man who cut for me was extremely helpful; he helped me to find several color options I hadn't seen, and I'm pretty sure gave me a price break on one of the fabrics because he didn't have the $18 silk (only the $30) in the color I needed, but yet $18 was the highest per-yard cost I had when my purchase was rung up.

And going in to a store like that was the best move I could have made, to wait and consider the colors in person (vs. buying on the internet), because being able to hold the prospective colors for jacket against waistcoat against pants settled me on them.

There are six fabrics there, and the gold and the two purples (on the right) go together, while the white and the periwinkle and the dark violet that you really can't see in this light go together. Interestingly, the two trim fabrics (the gold brocade and the white) were actually the first pieces I picked out. Perhaps they had to be, or perhaps they were simply the easiest two to choose because they were the most specific and therefore had the fewest choices. I will say this about Mood, it was nearly overwhelming for me as a consumer. There were just so many choices, and I am not sure I could have chosen well without having those two pieces to start from. I also honestly didn't know the second thing about what I needed. I had tried to research fabric weights and types, but it wasn't that clear when I was looking at the rolls of fabric and trying to decide. In the end I think I did well, certainly for my experience level and definitely within budget (under my upper limit, at that!), but it was nerve-wracking. And wonderfully exciting. It made the whole undertaking start to seem real.

For those of you following along for a sewing project perspective, I wish I could tell you what I actually bought, but I don't think these silks were specifically labeled--the four main ones came from the same section, and it was unmarked. I know they weren't Georgette, or charmeuse, or duchess satin, or watered silk, because those were labeled. The white is a cotton/silk blend and very filmy. The brocade is a brocade. The others are all slinky and thin. Probably too thin, but Mood didn't have thick silks there. Perhaps heavy silks don't exist anymore (since getting back from this trip, I've seen historical recreation websites complaining about the lack of historical-type silks so I feel less like an idiot for getting fabrics that are too thin). I will have to compensate by lining with stiff fabric or even using lining and interlining to stiffen them so they hold a shape, especially for his coat and maybe also my bodice and the top skirt. The pants and my petticoat, I think, will be fine simply with a lining.

I will take a picture of all my materials at some point, because it's quite funny to see how much fabric I have bought for this project. Maybe overbought, but I figured that would be better than the alternative! Since the Mood expedition, I have also bought locally material for my chemise, his shirt and stock, the linings and/or interlinings, and my stays (okay, actually most of their materials are internet purchases, except that I did find a beautiful duiponi silk at Hancock's fabrics that I am covering them with). But since the finishing fabrics have the most glamour, I wanted to show off what I'm working with (ultimately) before I start posting pictures of my chemise and stays--the only parts I've actually started.

And in the meantime, this is the best encapsulation of "What I did in New York":

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!