Costume Close-up

This little beauty arrived on my doorstep yesterday, and I'm quite excited. Being on a sewing hiatus, I'm not allowed to start any new projects until after Christmas, always seems to make my project lists just grow and grow and grow, I think I'm up to around 10 future costumes that I really want to make now. This book added a couple of more future projects, just by quickly looing in it.

I've always felt a bit scared about resizing patterns from books. In my costume history I have almost always failed miserably with that. I'm starting to think that I'm ready to take this step though, and the reasons for that are:

• When doing my Snow White costume I worked with a dress form for the first time and it made pinning and trying things so much easier. Before I start with my next sewing project I'm definitely going to invest in a dress form of my own.
• I have gotten more confident. Also for Snow White I drafted my own sleeve pattern, more or less by combining two previous patterns and it worked out good, so I'm hoping the step to drafting a pattern for a whole garment won't be too impossible.
• By now I have a pattern for an 18th century bodice that works well on my body. I can frankenstein patterns so that it's almost impossible to recognize what it was from the beginning. Using that bodice pattern as a starting point I don't think it will be too hard to make the garments that I want.

Out of the book there are two patterns that I want to use, and it might help me with a third. My costume plan for 2014, which I'm going to post about later, involves a costume with a redingote/men's inspired jacket. I think that the coat (19) on page 92-96 is very similar to what I'm hoping to do.

Then I love the jacket (6) on page 39-42. I totally understand why some blogs have called it the most reproduced garment, or "that Williamsburg jacket". In other words I would join very many costumers before me who have done this jacket, and there are a lot of pictures and tutorials for it out there. One little thought that is tingling in the back of my mind is if I should try and sew it by hand. I'm probably never going to be a perfect recreator and only use period techniques, but a jacket isn't very big and it could be fun to have a garment that I've made all by hand. I might aim for this jacket for 2015.

To finish off I have started to think about doing a proper robe à la française or sacque-gown. I've never been particularly fond of this style, but I saw so many nice costumes at the Masquerade in Kalmar that I started thinking about making one. Also my sister has always drooled over this style, and if I can finally persuade her to make an historical costume it would be probably be this kind of gown, and it could be fun if we made a project together.