Repairing Lady Poe for work

Sometimes I think about how I started as a costumer, and how important it was for me to not start another project before I had finished the one I was working on. That's not exactly the case anymore. I would also say that with more historical wardrobes I have found more opportunities to wear them and that means that I keep doing smaller projects while working on my main one. So I have finished the lacng holes for the sleeves of my court gown, but this weekend instead of finishing the sleeves I brought my Lady Poe down from storage.

You might remember how all the trim frayed liked crazy and I felt it was a bit of a disaster when I wore it for the ball last June.

This was the state of the trim, and I was spreading silk everywhere. Now I went over all the edges with my pinking shears again, but this time I painted all the edges with heavy starch. I made it from 1 tablespoon of potatoe starch and 400 ml of water. It was a gooey mess, but I painted it on with a brush, and the day after I pressed it.

This is the new trim edges. They do still fray a little bit, but it's not a disaster. I probably need to go over all the edges when I'm going to wear it and make sure that there are no loose threads that can start to unravel. The trim feels very papery, but there are no stains from the starch on the silk.

For fun I diluted the heavy start in more water and also starched my smallest cap, a petticoat and linen veil with it, just to see what would happen. I love the feeling of the starched petticoat, so I think I need to go over all my petticoats and starch them from now on

Why did I do all this? Well at work we needed to do a fun thing for social media about the middle of the 18th century, and of course I volunteered to dress up apropriately for the time period. It was also a chance for me to get photos where I'm standing in a place that's normally closed off.

For my hair I took the time to sleep on pin curls for the front of the head, but the back was just allowed to dry naturally. I then used cold cream and hair powder and made a tete de mouton hairstyle. The back hair was just braided in two braids that were looped up, and all the hairpins are hidden under the cap.

The social media thing will go online in the end of June.

Lady Poe v.1 finished

I wanted to have a post with just my finished Lady Poe.

I am calling this my v. 1. There are so many things I'm happy with, I really got the fit of the robe right, and the length is perfect. I still want to change some things though. The sleeves are a bit long, I would like to shorten them so that they really end at the elbow. The main thing I want to change is the trim though. Now I'm happy with the look of it, but unfortunately it wasn't enough to pink all the edges. It frayed dreadfully so I will have to take off the trim, repink it and stabilize the edges in some way. I also still have some tiny amount of fabric left so I can add more trim. I think I will try and make some trim for the petticoat, but I'm not sure it's going to be enough for that.

For now though here are some photos of the whole ensemble.

This photo was taken by the official photograper Viveka Sjölund. I love how this sideview really shows off the serpentine trim on the robe, and it's in no way visible that I taked it on the last thing in the night and morning before the ball. Also look at my giant sleeve ruffles!

A robe à la Francaise is at its best when you move in it though, here is a quick video of me walking in my robe. I was a bit stressed so I'm not exactly walking gracfully, so concentrate on the flow of the robe instead.

Nordens Minerva, 1762 ball

Yesterday (June 8th) it was finally time for Nordens Minerva, the 1762 ball that I had prepared Lady Poe for and one of my main costuming goals for the year.

Lady Poe got finished (well at least in a wearable state) and I had great fun. I didn't take a lot of photos during the evening, it simply felt wrong to have the mobile up too much when we were there to experience a proper time travel to 1762.

Just like with Celebration I will give you my schedule for the day, so you can see what goes into an event like this.

6 am - wake up and finish the last bit of rushed trim on the robe (I had been up until 3 am)
9:30 - take the train to Stockholm
12:15 - arrive in Stockholm. I had lunch at the railway station  and strolled around the shops there to pick up some flower decorations for the hair and a brush for my hair powder.
13:30 - check in at the hotel, thankfully my room was finished so I could get access to it early. I started straight away with the hair, since I figured that would take the most time, having never worked with hair powder before.

I really had a tiny room, the bathroom was bigger than the rest of the room. It was comfy with a good AC, but it was a bit complicated getting dressed in historical costume.
15:30 - I added the last stitches by attaching my sleeve ruffles to the robe. I switched my regular shoe buckles to the more fancier ones and put on shoes, stockings, shift and stays.  I always try to wear the stays/corsets for 30 minutes before I do the final tightening of it. That way the body has adjusted to it, and it's not just about being able to cinch it more it has to do with it not getting too loose and thus uncomfortable after a while.
16:00 - Put on make up and finished the hair with flowers and and some final powder
16:20 - put on the pocket hoops, petticoats and robe. I was ready to go.

My gown almost takes up the whole room

17:00 I was at the bus stop waiting for the chartered bus to arrive. I was lucky in that they had decided to have the chartered bus make a stop in the part of Stockholm where I had booked my hotel, otherwise I would have been more stressed about getting ready in time and getting through the subway in full 18th century costume.

18:00 The bus arrived at the place of the ball, Svartsjö slott.

I couldn't help myself and was even more excited about the ruins of the 16th century castle.

Some of the people I knew started to arrive after a while as well. Including Johanna in her robe trimmed with beautiful fly fringe.

That fly fringe was a quest on its own, she had lost all her fly fringe that she had been working on for months, but decided to simply start over and have it all finished by the ball anyway. There were a lot of us who were really happy for her.

After a while the ball proper started, with an appearance by the "king" and "queen" (the whole set-up for the ball was that it was a surprise party for queen Lovisa Ulrika who was designated as Minerva of the North). There was a live trio playing on authentic instruments, a poetry reading and ballet performance by a ballerna - all in period style.

Then there was dinner, and it was sooooo good. A lot of courses, and it even included a big showpiece in the middle. There was so much food that I was really full afterwards.

It tasted really good as well

The royal couple and their closest attendants.

Then there was dancing. This ball is organised by one of the really good dance groups, so I could only take part in the first dance. They did instruct it very quickly, and Johanna led me through it (I got confused when we had to switch and go the other way after half the dance).

The rest of the evening I mostly spent watching the dancers. The evening was warm and it was magical to sit on the veranda outside and watch a full ballroom in period dress dancing some quite complicated dances. By now my feet were tired, and I was tired from lack of sleep the nights before as well.

At midnight there was again some entertainment, with an opera singer singing Händel. Then the dancers finished with a dance by torchlight in the garden before the bus went home at 0:45.

I was back in my hotel room and in my bed at around 2. It was nice to get out of the stays after that many hours. It's not that they are too tight, it's more that when I get sweaty my skin starts to itch and after a while the shift doesn't really help.

It was a wonderful evening, and I am definitely going to keep my eyes out for when/if the organisers make another ball. Last year they did a 1680s event, so it can also be a challenge if they pick a time period that I haven't done before.

Lady Poe assembled

My last post was about my favorte part of the costuming process, but right after that comes my least favorite part. It is the part when it's time to assemble and sew it all together. The mistakes you make in this part are not as easily adjusted or hidden as everything else you have done up until now. I defnitely hit a motivational hurdle, I was afraid that after all the work I have done, the gown wouldn't fit.

Well I had to push through that an tonight it was time to get everything on and finally start seeing what the gown will look like on me, and not on the dressform.

When I had struggled to get everything on I could do a sigh of relief. I can get everything on by myself. There were some casualties, one of the straps on my stays was ripped off and I also tore a bit of the waist seam on the robe, so I will have to reattach those. Overall I am satisfied with it, but there is still a lot of work to do. One thing I was really worried about was the length of the robe and petticoat. I have really tried to use as little fabric as possible, and I was worried that it was going to be short. It is on the short side and would have looked even better with a few extra cm, but it will work. I will hem it with a hem facing, so that I don't have to do any double folds and loose any cm to the hem.

I am thinking that the robe opens up too much over the petticoat. I like the look, but I don't think I have enough fabric to be able to trim such a big piece of the petticoat. If I make the opening smaller, then maybe I can make some trim on the petticoat as well.

The sleeves are good, but I actually have to adjust my shift. The sleeves on the shift are longer than the sleeves on the robe, and the bunch under the outer sleeve. I think the sleeves will sit better with another shift. I need to go and see if I can find another shift, or if I need to shorten and take in the sleeves on the shift that I'm using.

I haven't posted about the petticoat, so here are some details of that. I wanted to save as much fabric as possible, so I decided to only use my silk for the front of the petticoat, the back is made from a grey cotton sateen.

If Madame Pompadour could use cheap fabric on the invisible parts of her petticoats, then I can do that as well. The back is made of a width of fabric (150 cm). The front is made of two widths of the silk, so in total 200 cm. I have sewed fake seam lines in the middle of each width of silk to mimic the period width of silks (50 cm).

The skirt is pleated into a waistband of cotton tape. Normally I would have hidden the cotton tape behind the fabric, but I want to save every mm of length so I made the waist tape the top of skirt instead.

On the back of the tape I have sewed a more narrow cotton tape over the raw edge of the silk, to protect it and keep it from fraying.

The next step of the process is to cut out and attach the sleeve ruffles and the stomacher. Those are the last irregular pieces of fabric, after that I will now how much fabric I will be able to use for trim. I will first trim the edges of the robe, and then when I see how much is left I can do the petticoat. In a worst case I will have an untrimmed petticoat. The stomacher will have contrasting fabric for decoration.

I will of course also have to fix the seams that I ripped while getting dressed.

Favorite part of the costuming process

Making a costume is a process. It involves several phases, from coming up with the idea to the finished thing. My favorite parts of this process are actually the early parts. The planning, when you set out to research what you need to do in order to make the costume. Now this can be a very frustrating thing. Historical costuming is easier, but for cosplay projects when you want something to look exactly like something else, then it can be annoying.

When you have gathered your supplies, then it's time to start making the costume. The first cutting out of the fabric is usually daunting, after that there's no turning back, especially if you have started working in something that's expensive and you won't have a second chance if you mess something up.

My Lady Poe is right now at my favorite stage of making a costume.

The main pieces are cut out, but they are not all sewn together, the skirts and sleeves are just draped on to the dressform. Still you can see that it's starting to look like a gown, and it is possible to imagine what the end result will look like. What I like with this stage is that it's so early in the process, I haven't made any big mistakes yet. If you don't count having to redo one of the skirt seams because I sewed it wrong side out and had to redo it, but that's not a mistake that will affect the end result.

Since nothing is totally sewn together there are also no problems with the fit, and my dressform is much more symmetrical than me and doesn't need to move, so everything just hangs the way I want it to.

I also haven't had to skimp on details yet, neither because I'm out of time nor material. I'm still not stressed about if I will be able to finish the gown or not, or not fulfill my expectations of it.

Will it end up as the gown I see in my head right now? Probably not, but at this moment I can just sit and look at it and imagine it.

Lady Poe sleeve's

I'm working on and off on the Lady Poe. I think I'm not stressed enough to put in an extra gear to get it finished, I'm also doing the long seams on the skirt and it's so boring that I find it hard to motivate me. Today it was Tuesday and I brought the sleeves with me to our Cosplay Dalarna crafting evening.

For the pattern of the sleeve I'm using my oldest 18th century pattern, my ugly pink satin jacket based on jacket C on page 26 of Patterns of Fashion 1. The sleeve fit fairly well though so when I trashed the jacked I reused the lining of the sleeve as a pattern for future 18th century pieces. I've used the pattern for my pet en l'air as well.

The sleeves are fully lined. In order to sew them together I first sewed the outer fabric, and one side of the lining together.

I sewed them together with a backstitch. From experience I'm stressing the sleeve seam a lot so I wanted it to be as strong as possible.

I then folded the other piece of the lining of over the raw edges of the first seam and hemstitched it in place, making sure to only cath the bottom layers so that the sttches wouldn't be visible on the outside.

Now it's only to press the sleeves and finish the main robe so that I can attach them to it.

Lady Poe - most of the bodice

The first thing I did with Lady Poe was to cut out the pieces for the petticoat, but then it was straight into the making the main robe.

The gown is constructed on the lining, so it's necessary to first make a lining that fits well.

For the lining I used the pattern that I had made for my pet en l'air. The whole construction is made from experiences with making the pet, as well as following the American Duchess Guide to 18th century dressmaking. The lining is made from a cotton sateen that I had in my stash. I didn't have enough linen to be able to make the lining out of it, and after all cotton was used in the 18th century.

The pattern was still very much a rough guide though, so I had to continue fitting it both on the dressform and on myself. I concentrated on making sure that the back and sides looked good and smooth.

For the outer fabric I cut out the side of the back piece, but I kept the full width of the fabric. Historically silk fabric was not made in the width we use today, the looms were only around 50 cm wide. My fabric is 1 m wide. In order to fake a more historical width I made a tiny fake seam in the middle of each fabric piece.

The fake seam is made with running stitches holding in a tiny fold. Both the lining and the outer fabric is sewn by hand with silk thread.

For the back piece I followed the instructions of the American Duchess, unlike when I did the pet en l'air. I have a cut out panel and it's adjustable with four pairs of ribbons. Unlike the pet en l'air there is no boning stabilising the back.

It took me seveal hours to align the outer bodice front with the lining, and make sure that there was no buckling of either fabric. I started with tacking the side seam to the lining, and then smoothing the fabric outwards and downwards and pinning, pinning, pinning until I was happy.

This is the front of the bodice. I am not totally happy with the shape of the opening, and the straps are too wide, but that is easier to adjust when the back is done. Also this is where I want to do the final fitting on myself, rather than the dressform. The bust area is where my dressform differ the most from my own body.

I then pinned the back piece to the side seam, armscye and shoulder seam.

And then it was time to pleat all the extra fabric into a good looking back piece. For this part I followed the instructions of the American Duchess again. It was definitely tricky to get all the fabric to lie flat and nice.

The pleating produces three layers of pleat, two visible and one hidden in the bottom layer. Here they are marked with pins to make them easier to see.

The top of the pleats was sewn down with prick stitch, down to where the back opening is.

The back still needs to be fitted though, and here is a difference from the pet en l'air. I sewed the bottom layer of the outer fabric, under all the pleats, to the lining with prick stitches. This makes the back fitted, even if the pleats still flow out from the back.

The last part was to unpin the side seam, armscye and shoulder seam. I then smoothed the fabric over the lining before I sewed the outer fabric to the lining. I used prickstitch for the side seam and small running stitches for the armscye and shoulder seam, since those seams won't be visible when it's all finished.

Next step is to attach the front and side panels to the skirt of the robe.

Restarting Lady Poe (1762 ballgown)

So during Easter I took care of my mother's cats and her house, I also had the time to start on my 1762 robe à la Francaise. It's just a bit more than a month to go until I'm going to the ball "Nordens Minerva", which is strict 1762 so it's about time to start working on the gown.

I'm going to call it my Lady Poe. The background is that back in 2017 I came up with the idea of making an 18th century Star Wars costume, and that it would be inspired by Poe Dameron. Due to a lot of different reasons, not the least that the post sent my fabric back rather than delivering it on time, it never happened. Now when I got my ticket for the ball I knew that I couldn't order more silk fabric when I had 10 yards of silk in my stash. With that Lady Poe has been resurrected. Now looking at the fabric it reads more OT X-wing orange than the the more brick coloured jumpsuit that Poe Dameron wears, so maybe I should call it Shara Bey instead. In the SW lore Shara Bey is Poe's mother and she was a pilot during the OT era.

I have a pinterest board for the 1760's here. I'm not going to go for an exact reproduction of a particular gown though, I simply haven't found any good examples of bright orange gowns.

This gives a fairly good view of the general look though, with all the trimmings. It is a bit problematic that the robes of the era are usually trimmed with the same fabric as the gown is made from, and when I ordered the fabric I had planned to use trim in other colours. One of the challenges will be to simply see how much trim I can get out of my fabric. That also changes my work process. I had planned to finish the petticoat first, but I need to cut out all pieces to both the petticoat and the robe in order to see how much trim I will have to decorate them.

The first step in making a full gown though is to make sure that you have all the underpinnings.

For the underpinnings I'm usng my oldest 18th century stays, my purple brocade stays. I really need to make new 18th century stays. These, and my 1790's jumps, are the only pairs that I can wear, the rest have gotten too small. These ones are also on the smaller side, but by keeping a gap in the lacing in front I can wear them, and the gap actually gives them a better silhouette compared to when they are laced together and the stays just flatten the bust rather than giving it a nice cone shape.

When making an 18th century gown, and especially a robe à la Francaise, it's important to be able to drape the dress rather than just relying on flat paper patterns. This is a problem since I don't have any handy helpers around. I also can't use my dressform as is, since it's an hourglass shape rather than the 18th century cone shape. What I have done though is that I have measured how big the gap in the stays are when I'm wearing them. I have then adjusted the dressform to its smallest settings, that way I can make it wear the stays, and where there is a gap between the stays and the dressform I padd it with some fabric. It's not perfect, but it makes it possible to drape the back, and then I can adjust the front with the help of the stomacher. 

Over the stays I'm using my pocket hoops. For a royal ball it would have been more appropriate to wear full panniers, but I have to be practical. I don't have time to make panniers, and pocket hoops are a lot easier to travel with and in.

The last piece of underwear is an organdy petticoat. This was an old UFO that I had started, probably when I first planned Lady Poe, and now it was time to finish it. I used Easter Friday to finish the petticoat. Organdy is a really interesting fabric, so stiff and light, even after pressing it. The petticoat also helped me practice how to make the outer petticoat, since it's necessary to adjust the length over the pocket hoops.

During the Easter weekend I had time to cut out the main petticoat and start on the robe itself. Here s a sneak peak of the current status of the project. I'm going to be soooooo orange when it's all finished.

Lady Poe is postpoened

I was happily sewing away on my petticoats for Lady Poe, when I got the notification that my fabric had arrived.

Unfortunately the notification had been sent out so late, that when I got to my post office, they had already returned it to the sender. The package had already been at the post for two weeks before I got the notification. For inofmration in Sweden today most post stuff is handled by supermarkets, who can't do anything except sell stamps and hand out things that have been delivered to them. They couldn't help me to track how far the package had gotten and if it was possible to stop it before it left the country.

I tried to get in contact with customer service, but this was Friday evening and it was closed until Monday morning. During the weekend the package was sent back and arrived in Thailand. The only reaction from the post customer service was "oh, too bad but things like that happens all the time".

I have been in contact with the seller, so they will send it back to me. Of course that means that when it arrives I have paid for postage twice from Thailand to Sweden.

This also means that there is no way that I will be able to finish Lady Poe for Celebration. I had really been looking forward to wearing it there, and now I have to really think about if I'm going to make it into Lady Poe or just go straight to a conventional 18th century gown.

I have a back up plan for another costume for Celebration, but it will in no way be as spectacular or unique. I'm not going to jinx it and post about it until I have the fabric safe in my hands though.

HSM17 - Firsts and lasts - 18th C pocket hoops

It feels great to finally be able to post a HSM challenge again. It was obvious for me to go with the pocket hoops for my Lady Poe costume for the challenge. I have 18th Century stays, but I've only worn them with bum pads, now all the focus is on the hips. Without the pocket hoops, well it simply wouldn't be a 1770's robe à la Francaise.

I hav simply followed the instructions on The Dreamstress' Panier-Along tutorial, so for that reason I haven't documented my work with the pocket hoops. The only change I made was to use steel boning instead of reed.
The HSM facts

The Challenge: January - Firsts and lasts
Material: 1 m cotton
Pattern: The Dreamstress' Panier-Along
Year: 1770
Notions: steel boning, cotton tape
How historically accurate is it? Everything is done by machine, and even if cotton existed linen would have been a more likely choice of fabric. Ca 50%
Hours to complete: one day
First worn: Not yet
Total cost: $17 for boning and cotton tape, the fabric was from the stash

Lady Poe - the 18th century rebel pilot

I've mentioned this costume a few times already in my plans for the year, and here it's time to present it.

The idea for the costume started out with the fun idea of putting a starship in an 18th century hairstyle, and after Celebration Anaheim in 2015 I decided that I would do it for the next US Celebration. I didn't really have a clear idea exactly how, the original idea was to make an R2-inspired gown, maybe including blue hair and an X-wing in the hair. I didn't think too much about getting it historically accurate. Then the idea grew, I talked to some more people about it, and then  I realized that if I was going to spend a lot of time and money I wanted to make something that I would be able to use more than just once. That meant that I didn't want to make something white, with blue hair, but still being very easily recognizable as Star Wars, and that would still fit in with a spaceship in the hair. So the next idea was to make a rebel pilot. Bright orange is not a colour I would like to have on an 18th century gown though, but there are the TFA resistance pilots, that have a more reddish colour than the original x-wing pilots.

Basically I was hoping to combine this

with this

Here is the breakdown of my plan for the costume that I will call Lady Poe.

1. Underpinnings

I will use my 1760's brocade stays and one of my existing chemises. I will need to make pocket hoops and petticoats to go over the hoops, since all my 18th century petticoats are made to fit over a bumpad. I'm not doing a full pannier, so the costume will be an informal gown, not full court gown.

2. Hair

I have already bought a wig and the hair needed to make a full 1770's hairstyle. I'm scared, but I'm also looking forward to do my first full wig hairstyle. In the hair I will put a model of Poe's X-wing; Black One. The wig will be very dark brown, and hopefully look quite natural on me.

3. Robe à la Francaise and matching petticoat

This will probably be my main inspiration for the robe and petticoat. I'm not sure if I'm going to use a loose stomacher or the compere front though. It will be in silk and for pattern I'm going to use the pattern that I made for my pet en l'air.

4. Star Wars trimmings

To make it look like a rebel pilot it will need a lot of trim in the right places. The TFA flak vest, with the ribbed panels going down like a vest, will be turned into pleated ruffles down the robings. The belt and ejection straps will be strips of grey pleated silk. In order to translate the chestbox to this version I want to make the compere front or the stomacher with fabric imitating the switches and patterns of the chestbox. Finally Poe is the owner of the droid BB8, and I'm hoping to translate his round shape into the circular trim that can be seen on many 18th century petticoats.

In the summer I made this quick image of how I was thinking.

I can't put too much energy into the trim though because I want to remove it when I get back from Orlando and put some accurate 18th century trim on to the gown, so that I will have a working 18th century robe à la Francaise.