Demetrius Part 1

I did make quite a few garments for this year’s Faire Season. The following one of  three costumes started in March and completed in time for our home faire in July. It was also one of the most complicated projects I’ve worked on, to date. It currently totals seven pieces, in six colors and three different different fabrics.

Meet Demetrius the Griffin

Demetrius is a friend of a guild member, who I first met at a Renaissance Faire gone Baroque Piracy, last March. I gave him one of my business cards and the emails began.

His goal was to dress as a Traveling Merchant of the Renaissance Era. He had many ideas and 3 concept drawings, which he sent copies of. Two of which are shown below.

Concept Sketch

Full Color Concept Drawing of Demetrius the Merchant

Through emails we planned the minimum pieces he needed , that I could make. One robe with vents for the wings and tail, pants, shirt, a faux shirt or dicky, a hat and a coin pouch.

We then met for measurement taking and fabric selection. The original idea was to dress him in neutral tones of brown and grey. After some discussion we broadened the color palette, to a light grey shirt, light brown or tan pants, a dark blue robe with gold linen trim, a tan hat with gold trim, and a gold coin pouch with a blue rolled hem.

In this post I will discuss 2 of these pieces, the pouch and the hat.

Coin Pouch

The simplest item to make was finished first. This was the coin pouch. Two pieces of gold heavy weight linen trimmed with a blue woolly nylon rolled hem, and  a casing stitched for the draw string.

Version One, rejected

Version 2 in progress

The hat was the second item of this project to be completed. It is a cone shaped hat From a Victorian Santa Claus Pattern, that I modified.

In the drawing the hat would sit between the ears and drape over the back of the head. The color would match the robe and be trimmed in grey faux fur. We changed it to be the same color of heavy weight Ginger colored Linen. and trimmed with a wide band of Autumn Gold heavy weight linen. The band was doubly interface to ensure it wound stand up.and the cone was lined to give it more fullness in draping.

The Hat is Finished with a Gold Colored Feather

As you can see the completed hat does not sit between the ears. We could not find a way to hold the hat in place without using bobby pins or something else that would pull out Demetrius’ fur, or require attempting to pin it to the mask, which could stap the head within, or pull out fur, in the pulling out the pin.

For now at least,  the hat sits on one ear, with a feather in the band.

 

It’s going to be a hat box. Of sorts.

New Photo Post: http://ift.tt/1pDxMd9

 

Return to Downton Abbey (Season 3!)

Warning – spoilers below the jump.

I would be remiss if i didn’t mention last Sunday’s first season 3 episode of Downton Abbey. The whole cast is back for more drama, a wedding,

 

Strange 19c Hat Fitting Device

Image via http://www.houseofninesdesign.com/

Delightful serendipity! Yesterday I found a post about a strange Victorian hat-fitting device – The Conformateur. I had never heard of such a thing before, but the Victorians did come up with some fascinatingly innovative (though not always practical / functional) devices. Essentially, you place a piece of paper in the top of the device and place it on your head. “Fingers” in the device press to the shape or your head and make pin marks in the paper, late allowing the milliner to replicate the shape for a custom-fit hat.

Lots of pics on the originating site, including detailed shots of the workings and original diagrams. Here is another post about another conformateur owner who used 3D printed parts used to repair their device.

(Both posts were originally found on BoingBoing)

 

Diagram for a Mad March Hat

Thoughts on construction of the hat frame for the 1912 Project’s March Challenge Pattern, the Mad March Hat:

• The provided diagram is misleading. It makes it appear that everything is round. This cannot be accurate as your head is oval. So you have an oval in a round shape. This also means that when the pattern measurements say that the width or the part that sits on your head is 2 5/8″, that will be at different angles at front, back and sides. This differs from most hats you might make today in that the headsize opening is usually the inside of the brim that you see, leading out to the edge of  the brim. This had has a headsize opening burried up and inside the sides of the hat. The inside frame could almost be free floating, but this would affect the tilt of the hat, which would probably look better at a static point.
• I made a very rough frame (sorry, no pics, that would have required a third hand and Zaphod Beeblebrox I am not) to get an idea of the scale of the hat and how it would look with my face shape.

 

The March Hat – Beneath Which, We Are All Mad…

(When searching for a nice period Toque photo to show everyone, I happened to find this Titanic Hat via Wikipedia! “Mrs. J.J. “Molly” Brown presenting trophy cup award to Capt. Arthur Henry Rostron, for his service in the rescue of the Titanic. That’s the Unsinkable Molly Brown.)

When I think of hats of the Titanic era, I think of the giant brimmed picture hats, but of course, that was not the only hat worn. The 1912 Project has given us a March Challenge Pattern of a Spring Hat for Mature Women, which I’ve decided to dub The Mad March Hat.

In Alison Gernsheim’s book, “Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey” (Dover Books), we find an image of an older woman

 

The 1912 Project Begins

The 1912 Project is about to start with 400 Test Sewers! We’ve been broken up into groups and patterns should be coming our way any day now. The official blog for the project can be found here. We will be starting with patterns from the April 1912 issue, as this is the closest to the sinking of the Titanic, then going back and working our way through the entire year.

What I really want to show you are some of the illustrations from La Mode Illustree 1912, issue #3:

The three items show are:

1. Ladies Taffeta Dress (#0158) – blue taffeta trimmed in satin bias binding of the same color with plastron and under cuffs of pleated white tulle.
2. Ladies Coat (#0168) –  gray velvet with white stripes with black velvet cuffs and lapels.
3. Ladies Jacket (#0169) – a ladies wool coat with silk lining and velvet cuffs. I want this! I love the large lapels and the way the lining shows. This looks like it would lend itself well to having a hood, though I doubt the original did.

I can’t wait to see what pattern comes to the rogues first! And oh just look at those glorious hats!

 

Hello New Year (of sewing projects)

Hello! I’ve been absent from my own blog, but I have been sewing (though not costumes). The holiday season saw me making purses. This was a second attempt at such a thing, the first being a very simple pattern in gorgeous fabric. These Christmas purses were made in no less beautiful fabrics, but were a bit more complex. I’ve learned more about interfacing than I expected. As a historical costume sewer I don’t use modern interfacings very often. I’ve also been learning to crochet.

 

 

It’s the new year, but I don’t like setting resolutions. My feeling is that, if you can’t manage to do something because you need or want to, the fact that it s a new year isn’t going to help you. But it is a great time to contemplate a new project list. I don’t have anything firm yet, except for a belated Christmas gift, two baby presents and a wedding. I do think this will be a good year to focus on steampunk, starting with a tentative plan to make spats for my new boots.

The other thing I have on the schedule for this year is to participate in The 1912 Project. I’m pretty excited about it. Vintage patterns tell us more than just how a garment could be made. They give you an idea of what people valued, what kind of time they put into such activities, what materials were available (and so, what kind of industries were going on). They make assumptions about sewing skills that we may not understand today. They give you little hints about how things were done by hand, individually, in a slower world. The Vintage Pattern Library is working on digitizing 1912 editions of La Mode Illustree, including making detailed full size patterns of the garments therein, in memory of  the sinking of  the Titanic in 1912. Last July my small town marked the 100 anniversary of its incorporation with some period festivities and that’s when I started to research and become interested in the period. I recently had  the chance to watch all of the first season of Downton Abbey, which starts with the news that the Titanic had been sunk. I find the period and costumes fascinating. Things were changing between the classes, women were starting to have a voice, old ideas about clothing and medicine were relaxing. It was the dawn of our modern era. And the hats were awesome. I will be making at least monthly updates on the  patterns I am given to sew.

Additional photos after the jump that do the fabrics more justice.

 

Follow the White Rabbit

Sometimes 100 pounds of candy just isn’t enough… At least not in my neighborhood, on my favorite costume holiday of the year – Halloween. When I say there were hoards of children descending on our tea party, I am quite serious. The parents descended on and disappeared two large to-go containers of Starbucks coffee, though they kept spilling it thanks to he cup holder thing that is attached. And then it was 8pm. We were out of everything.

We had a White Rabbit (who ended up handing out much of that 100 pounds of candy as we all said, “follow the white rabbit” and pointed at her), a March Hare, Mad Hatter, Caterpillar, White Queen and me, in my slightly steampunk, could have been an adult Alice if my costume had been black, white, gray and blue instead of green, costume.

Costume-wise, we had the lazy (our Hatter wore leather hat and leather trench – only lazy because he made the hat last year), the simply but effective (our White Rabbit wore a red vest, white shirt, gloves, pants and knit hat with ears) and the clever (our Caterpillar had wings and many stripped legs made from thigh-high striped socks). My shoe heel fix was a failure. By the end of the evening I had only one tiny piece of heel left! My Eton Jacket turned out really well (additional images forthcoming); the striped turn-back cuffs and bias binding really made it.

Lessons learned?

1. I can’t fix everything myself. I need to visit the cobbler to have my heel repaired (or create a stacked leather heel from some really thick leather – wait, didn’t I just say I can’t do everything myself?!?)
2. Figure out how to make the coffee container less cumbersome to avoid spillage,. Buy more coffee and creamer.
3. Find out of Costco will drop-ship candy to my house. Will 150 pounds be enough? Where does it end?

Next year’s theme? That’s right – Mad Science! I can’t wait for next year!

 

(White Rabbit image John Tenniel’s original illustration, via Alice-in-Wonderland.net. Mad Scientist image via Dian Kress’ blog.)

 

Top Hat Transformation DIY

I have a great Steampunk costume that I made in 2009 when we enjoyed Halloween with friends on Frenchman Street in New Orleans. In the crush of reveling bodies I never managed to get more than a head-shot of my own costume. The hat unfortunately did not survive the plane ride home. This year we’re doing a Mad Hatter Tea Party in my front yard (see Dogs and Cats Living Together… Mass Hysteria!” My Favorite Holiday!) and I’m recycling the costume that my friends have never seen.

The Humble Bowler Hat, Pre-Transformation

The quick fix for the hat is a hat conversion. I’m going to take a bowler hat I have and transform it (temporarily) into a top hat. The beauty of this transformation is that it doesn’t require any special tools, just the existing hat, some fabric, flexible poster board, a lining fabric (optional, but I’ll explain why it’s a good idea) some glue and tape. I used Tacky Glue, but you could go the hot glue route. I didn’t feel like burning my fingers.

1. Measure around the hat, where it attaches to the brim – on the outside.

2. Measure the height of  the crown. The top hat must be at least this tall. A good top hat height is 6″.

More instructions after the jump.