Favorite costume photos of 2013

When you are finished with your costume, a lot of costuming is about posing for pictures and having fun with your friends. This is simply a collection of my favorite photos of me in costume 2013, I'm not going to wear any more costumes this year, but I'm really looking forward to 2014..

10. Me as a female Santa during the traditional Christmas market at work

9. Trying to go bowling in costume had its challenges, but nothing that couldn't be helped with some help from a friend

8. The first ever photo of two A-wing pilots, with A-wing helmets, together.

7. Snow White reading a book about occultism

6. Come taste a sweet Gingerbread jawa

5. It's important to match the colour of the robe with the surroundings

4. A (speeder) bike babe is both hot and cool

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3. The fun you can have with friends in costume

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2. Drama in blue and silver underground

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1. Bringing joy to the children

The last picture isn't the best of my costume, but whenever people wonder why I spend a lot of money on going to places and dressing up, then I can just show this picture and the smile of that girl when she got to meet a real space princess and hero.

cheap 18th century shoes

When doing historical costuming, it's always so hard to find shoes. There are quite a few wonderful shoemakers out there, but the prices are what you can expect from artisans doing a specialized craft. I plan on buying a pair of shoes from American Duchess one day, those shoes aren't too expensive, but the freight and customs double the final price. For my first events I used the pair of shoes I wear with my folk costume, but this summer I got to know all the things that are wrong with them. They are also a bit clumsy. Throughout the summer and autumn I was on the lookout for a suitable pair of shoes, whenever I visited the local second hand store. I wanted a pair of black or red shoes, and I mostly looked at the shape of the heel, I wanted something at least close to a classic pompadour heel.

original shoe

One day I stumbled upon these for 125 SEK.They had an ugly plastic buckle, but I started with removing that one. Then I discovered that the straps were asymmetric, one long and one short.

Straps folded

I cut off a piece of the too long strap, and simply used superglue to attach it to the shorter one. Then I folded both straps into the shoe and attached them to the side with more superglue.

 I threaded some nice ribbon in the loops that were formed from the straps, and voilà a pair of decent 18th century shoes. I can also change the ribbons whenever I want to match whatever I'm wearing.

There are no pics of the heels, and I like them because of the shape, but it's visible that they are built up from several layers of plastic. Still I don't think anyone is going to crawl on their knees and judge the shoes that closely. They still look better than my folk costume shoes toegether with my historical gowns.

Merry (and costumey) Christmas

Since we celebrate Christmas Eve as the main day of the holidays I want to just say a big and warm "Merry Christmas" to you all in preparation for the coming days.

This is my holiday-themed costume from the year. For the Sci-Fi con in Stockholm in early december I turned my jawa costume into a gingerbread jawa and ran around and gave people gingerbread cookies. The white trims are simply pieces of an old bedsheet that I pinned onto the costume.

Snow White III - accessories and final gown

In order to finish the Snow White look I needed to add some details. I decided to add her standing white collar and a red cape. I also wanted to make her sleeves a bit more closer to the original slashed sleeves, so I added red cuffs to them.

 The sleeve was probably not very historically accurate, but it still looked good. I started with a half circle and added three darts to give it some shape.

The base layer was heavy cotton canvas, and on both sides of each dart I added boning tape and put short pieces of synthetic whale bone in.

The outer layers were heavy poly satin. I had planned to actually use some nice silk for it, but it was too flimsy. Instead I found this heavy poly satin in my stash and decided to use it. I also

added some iron on interfacing to them. Then I sewed the two outer pieces together, so that they formed a pocket, I kept the lower, straight edge open. I then slid the canvas layer, with the boning, into the pocket and closed it with a piece of cotton bias tape. 

The cape was a rectangular piece of silk charmeuse that I hand hemmed. The top of it was gathered into a piece of red cotton bias tape. I sewed the cape on to the dress by folding it over the neckline and tacking the bias tape to the lining. The reason why I had used biast tape was simply because I didn't want to to stitch through the silk, since this is a cape that is going to be taken on and off.




At this stage I also realized that Snow White's cape is tied in front, so I had to make two ribbons and attach them. This turned out really well though since the red ribbons gave a nice frame to the front neckline. After the cape was sewn on I also attached the collar by tacking it to the lining.

I don't have any pictures of the cuffs, but they were basically just tubes that I sewed on to the hem of the sleeve, folded up and attached to the sleeve. I also added some small flounces of silk chiffon to the sleeves.

Here you can see the dress from the back/side. Together with a gorgeous Little Red Riding Hood. One thing I hadn't calculated was that my hair was actually so big that it pushed the collar more backwards than I had planned.

Here's the dress from the front/side. Quite late at night in a hot room, so excuse the glazed and seaty face.

My plan for the future of this gown is to turn it into a more historical costume. I still have some of the blue taffeta left and I want to make a lot more trims for it. I had planned to make some bows for the skirt from the red cape fabric, but simply ran out. I also want to make bigger flounces. This was to try to make the flounces from the RH822 pattern, but I'm more happy with the ones I've made from tutorials on the internet.

Snow White II - sleeves

As mentioned in my posts about my other two robe anglaises I had a big problem with the sleeves. For Snow White I wanted that fit well and went down to below the elbow. I also knew that some day I want to make a gown with a full length sleeve. So for the first time in a really long time I decided to take my time and draft a pattern that fit me, and that I would be able to use for other projects as well. I didn't start from scratch though.

 To the left is the lining of the sleeve for my 1760s jacket, that i ripped out, and to the right is my modified sleeve pattern for the RH822 gowns. The 1760's sleeve had a good size and the other one had a good shape, but was too big in the sleeve head and too short after my modifications.

I measured the length of the sleeve head from the good fitting sleeve and put markers on the good shaped sleeves. Then I took a good look at the sleeves in Arnold and freehanded a line that followed both the markings and the shape of both sleeves.

The sleeve was still too short though, so I cut it in half and spread it out, I think I added around 10-15 cm.

This is the final pattern for a full length 18th century sleeve. I didn't just measure though. It took a lot of pinning and marking with pen until I had a good fit.

The resulting sleeve goes all the way down to my wrist, is shaped so it doesn't just hang straight down but has a nice curve, and I have no problem getting my fat over arms into it.

Here are the sleeves attached to the bodice. As you can see these sleeves are just 3/4 sleeves. In order to shorten them I folded away the middle of the sleeve pattern above, so I would keep the curves at both ends of the sleeve.

Unfortunately the sleeves didn't fit perfectly, but it has more to do with shape and size of the armscye. It was too small, so I had to make more pleats than planned to get the sleeve the fit, and I got a bit of a bulge in the back as well

Still I'm happy with the sleeve pattern, and this one of the most self drafted pattern pieces I have ever made, so it has given me confidence in trying to do more of that in the future, as well as managing better with scaling up patterns from books.

Read more in Snow White III

Snow White 1780

In October it was time for my biggest 18th century event ever. A ball held at a private mansion in the south of Sweden. It was a masquerade and the theme was fairytale. Since I still consider myself a beginner when it comes to 18th century costuming I realized that I wouldn't be able to make the most accurate or the most stunning costume, but I could make one with a lot of humor. I decided to dress up as a Disney princess, but as if she had lived in the 1780's. My choice fell on Snow White, since her colour scheme and style is easily recognizable.

The basic idea was simple:
Dark blue bodice with puffy sleeves lined with red, a red cape and white stand up collar
Yellow skirt

My first thought was to do a short blue jacket and plain skirt, but when I imagined it I realised that the puffy sleeves would look too unproportional to that. Adding a flounce to the skirt might help, but I haven’t seen any flounced skirts to that kind of jacket. It could work with a jacket with a short skirt or tails, but I don’t have a pattern for that, and I don’t trust myself when it comes to draping totally new patterns. Then I found this extant gown from the Metropolitan Museum.

It’s still a robe anglaise, so I could use the same pattern I used for my spring gowns, but the skirt of the robe is put so far back that it wouldn't overwhelm the yellow skirt. So when I had decided what style I going to use I had a plan of attack.

Then came the fabric decisions. I can only rely on websites to find suitable fabrics, but that means taking risks when it comes to the actual colour and feel of the fabric. The big decision was if I should use silk or not. Silk is expensive, but the feeling is just so much better than everything else. In my heart I had probably decided that I wanted to make a silk dress, but it took some time to be able justify the extra cost. For the petticoat I’m using a gold/yellow brushed cotton though. Also making a cotton petticoat means that I can use it for some more every day attire in the future. Still since it’s brushed it’s a bit shiny, and heavier than just a normal cotton.

Petticoat breakdown
Materials used: 4 yards of 110 cm wide brushed cotton. I made a mistake and didn’t notice that the webshop took orders in yards and not in meters so I thought I had bought 4 meters. The difference isn’t that big, but since I used absolutely all of the fabric, wit 4 meters I could have gotten a deeper flounce rather than just a small ruffle as a trim. I also used a couple of meters of cotton ribbon for the waistband. It’s white, but it won’t be visible and I rather use white but sturdy cotton than the yellow but slinky satin ribbon that I had.

Historical accuracy: I sewed the side seams and the waist band on the machine but hemmed the petticoat and the ruffle by hand. The ruffle is also attached by hand. I’ve only used pure cotton, no polyester or other synthetic materials
The Robe
 I got to borrow my sister’s dressform, so that I could get started. I really need to buy a dressform for myself, it’s been so much easier to be able to try and pin stuff togeter before cutting and sewing.

I used the RH822 again and started with cutting out the lining out of cotton canvas. As you can see it was too big and the neckline was really high. I took out most of the width in the side seams and then I simply cut the neckline wider. To be honest I cut it a bit too wide, but it works, I just have to fiddle a bit to make sure that the upper binding or the straps of the stays don't show through.

This is the bodice, just before finishing the neckline and the bottom. The outer fabric is a navy silk taffeta. It's closed with hook and eye tape, sure that's not the most historically accurate but it works really well. You can also se how far back the skirt of the robe is set. From the front you will see the petticoat and the bodice, but not much of the skirt of the robe.

Read more in the next post: Snow White II

Fabric shopping in London

I've just come home from a short holiday in London. Since I had most of the days just by myself, and since I have already seen most of the "must sees" in London, I had decided that it was time to do some fabric hunting. I first went to the Swedish sewing forum sysidan.se and found this thread about fabric stores in London I also found the blog Tilly and the Buttons, and her recommendations for fabric shopping. Both places recommended Liberty, Goldhawk Road and Walthamstow.

I spent the first day in London in the shopping district around Oxford Cirkus, so of course I went to Liberty. Since my focus is mainly on finding fabrics for historical costuming, or Star Wars, I didn't find anything that caught my eyes there. It's mostly prints, so it must be a heaven for quilters, but not my kind of fabric store. On my last day I decided to visit Goldhawk Road. It was mostly because I was quite tired and it's closer to central London. It's still in zone 2 on the Tube so I could go there on my daypass, unlike Walthamstow that's further out at the end of the Victoria line.

Goldhawk Road was great. A full street with little shops with Sikh owners that were really friendly, but not pushy when I went into their shops. Most of the fabrics were really shiny and glitzy poly satins, there were some shops that had a lot of prints as well. Once again I'm not really into fabrics with small flowery prints, or African inspired prints. The poly fabrics were cheap, at least compared to what I'm used to, but there were also at least one shop with quality, natural fibres. It was filled with nice tweeds, wools and linens. I of course ended up there and spent most of my cash in just one shop.

The one thing that is so great about being able to go to a physical store is just the inspiration that you get by seeing the bolts of fabric, and being able to feel them and compare them. That is nothing you can do on ebay. In the end I bought three different fabrics.

The two top fabrics are good example of me just getting floored when I saw them. They are a very fine and pure wool, great draping. I hadn't planned on buying anything like that, but the bolts were on top of each other and the yellow and blue/dark green colous just looked so great together that I knew that I wanted to use one fabric for something, and to trim it with the other. Now this wasn't a cheap fabric, it cost £20/m, but I'm pretty sure that I would still have to pay the double if I found anything like it around here. My thought definitely goes toward a little 18th century jacket in the blue/green fabric with yellow trimmings.

The third fabric was a changeant poly chiffon. This one was really cheap though, £2,5/m. I've been on the lookout for a changeant chiffon to make a new veil for my Amidala Purple Travel gown, and this might be it. I have to see if it's a tad too dark though, I guess I have to see it compared to the rest of the gown and in different lights. Otherwise I'm thinking about doing a simple bias cut party dress out of it. I have a vogue pattern for that kind of dress that I haven't tried.

It was definitely fun going on a fabric safari, and maybe next time in London I might even go to Walthamstow.