1895 Ensemble

[mala_14]

I got pictures of my 1895 ensemble before I presented on it at a conference. This ensemble has parts for multiple HSM challenges, including: Tucks and Pleating, Protection, and Gender Bender. The skirt is Tucks and Pleating, with it's double pleats at the CB. The corset cover is for Protection. And the bow tie and shirtwaist are for Gender Bender. I'm too lazy to put in the whole spiel for all three of these. But here are pictures!

The dressform's torso is too long and the neck too big plus no arms, so everything isn't fitting perfectly. But it's remarkably close to me in size, which is cool, considering it was a random find in the university's archives. I was up past 1:30am the day before the conference sewing the darned bow tie. It gave me fits and and is actually really crappy. You can't see, but the entire middle section is topstitched instead of properly finished. I made it too narrow and couldn't turn the ends through it and the silk was fraying. It was a mess. But I thought the outfit really needed it.

For my presentation, I gave a short talk about modern historical costumers and how the goal of historical costuming isn't always 100% accurate reproduction, but that we can learn a lot about the era as well as our present mindsets from historical costuming. I talked about how reproducing the past isn't possible, but that there are a lot of interesting things going on between the past as it actually existed and how we think about it from our modern viewpoint. I used these articles as examples to frame my talk, showing the current interest worldwide in historic costume:
Sarah Chrisman "I love the Victorian era. So I decided to live in it."
Rebecca Onion "Vox's Victorians"
Leimomi Oakes AKA The Dreamstress "A Practice in Practicality: Doing Housework, 1910s style"
Ruth Goodman "Getting Clean, the Tudor Way"
Then I undressed the dressform so that people could see all the layers. One of the ladies wanted to try on the corset, so I let her. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed this conference and am looking forward to next year's. But I am SO exhausted. I've spent the past 3 weeks finishing final papers, moving, sewing a bunch of this ensemble, writing my conference paper, and attending the conference. Whew!

Comments

[atherleisure.livejournal.com]

The way mine worked out, the mark for the first pleat ended up about at the inside fold of the first pleat, and the mark for the second pleat ended up at about the outside fold of the first pleat. I'm wondering if when they made the pattern the accidentally marked the X's the depth of the pleat instead of double the depth of the pleat.

I didn't flat line mine, which is made of a mid-weight wool twill. It's got some weight to it, but it's not ridiculously heavy. I think I'm going to do the crinoline at the hem and a hem facing of plain cotton. It will be interesting to see a comparison of how the two skirts hang.

I hope you don't think I'm being a copy-cat, but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

[mala-14.livejournal.com]

Hm, I could see that. I think I always just assume period patterns are likely to be incorrect some way or have some sort of weirdness.

Sounds like a really good plan. I bet that you'll get some good results.

I don't think you're being a copycat at all! I love it when different people use the same patterns or do similar takes on things. It's so neat to see how they turn out. And we're all just building on the same information and research.