Gatsby Summer Afternoon 2014

As usual, I am dependent on the kindness of other's for photos. Bad blogger. I love to HAVE pictures, I just hate taking them. Where's my publicist? All the photographs in this post were taken by Tanya Grigg.

 

 

The hat I made ages ago. It's completely sewn together. No hot glue here!

I think the secret to having a good photo taken is to have the photographer really like you. It just makes things so natural and unposed. The dress came together nicely at the last minute.

My hair is a fright. It was just too hot to wear the hat the whole time

Here's a photo from the back with one of the antique cars on display. One of the lovely things about the Gatsby Summer Afternoon, is that everyone makes a real effort not to have any anachronisms. So as you look around you, you really are transported back in time.

We were all a little more "relaxed ' in this photo if you know what I mean. Booze, I mean booze.

Tanya, Carol and Alana did a wonderful job of setting up our spot. It was a good thing because getting in and out of the picnic was a bit of a clusterfrack. The gentleman in the vest above took very good care of us. Without him we would have been in the parking lot forever.

Just a bit of our fantastic spread, also Melissa. Shhh. Don't tell her she's in the picture.

Ken, completely in his element

Carol, Melissa, Ian and Alana in front of the Dunsmuir House in Oakland.

Our lovely photographer, Tanya, on the other side of the camera for once.

Even though the twenties is not necessarily my favorite time period in terms of how the fashion flatters my figure. I do appreciate the opulance and elegance of the time. Until, you know, Dust Bowl, Prohibition and Depression and all that. Still its a lovely fantasy and that's what all this is about.

Costume College Professional Pictures

These photos were all taken by Andrew Schmidt for Costume College 2014.

On Friday Night, we had the Ice Cream Social. Being a lagger, I completely missed the ice cream, but Tanya and I snuck out for a little sumthin sumthin at the bar. There's also gin in that flask, but funny enough, I never got around to drinking it.

1980's Thrift Store dress with the shoulder pads and sleeves removed. Thrift store spangled purse. Headband cobbled together from Joannes, Shoes I've had forever from Macy's. Stockings from thrift store rolled down with rolling garters from the CoCo marketplace and a flask from the marketplace.

Saturday night was the Gala. You've heard me kvetching about putting that together already. Here's the whole finished look.

The plaid silk was won in a raffle. The skirt, overskirt and bodice are all Truly Victorian patterns. The black trim was removed from a tutu I found in my garage. I have my hair up in a hair piece I made from a long gray cosplay wig. Gloves I found at the thrift store.

I am wearing a bustle under there, it just was half of a pair of pocket panniers I made with really cheap plastic boning. It didn't have enough umph to keep everything up. The flowers were also kind of stuck on last minute also. It's also too short. I will save this one. I have silk left, so I'm going to make a large pleated ruffle to go around the bottom to lengthen it. I'll also make a real bustle to wear under it. I plan on making a lot more goo ga's to add to the overskirt also.

On Sunday Afternoon we had the Ascot Tea. I already had my walking skirt and gibson girl blouse I made for the Asilomar event. I added a black wool jacket I found at the thrift store and a hat I made for a Mae West costume I wore a few years back. Those are totally the same flowers from my bosom the night before.

I do think the jacket is worth reworking for real. I may end up making it into a 1930's or 40's jacket instead of an Edwardian. The purse was also found at the thrift store.

I did get a pretty good Facebook profile pic out of it.

Costume College Friday Blur

Friday. Friday? Friday......? Friday at Costume College kind of went by in a blur. Let's see. We woke up at the crack of 6:30. (we did this every day, not even on purpose) The L.A. sunshine sweetly singing to us like little birds. This is a good thing, since we had so much to do. Well, I actually had very little to do, since I'd cancelled my tour to FIDM. I thought I would end up taking more classes or work on my Gala dress or something. I didn't really end up doing that.

We did make it down to the Freshman Orientation at 9:00am. Poor Elizabeth, who was giving us the orientation had very little sleep. She managed to be funny and informative at the same time anyway. Here's a "proof of being awake" selfie courtesy of Tanya.

I'm becoming very aware of the fact that there are very few costume pictures on here. I am the worst blogger ever. I don't even own a camera. Thank goodness for other people.

Ah, I also managed to take in an 18th century hair demonstration from Kendra from DeMode Couture . I think that was Friday. Note to self, "blog right after you get back from an event. You are a flibbertygibbet" She wrote and amazing book on styling your own hair or a wig in 18th century style. There are definitely tips in there for working with wigs and hairpieces from any time period.

Buy the book here

Then what happened? I spent a bunch of time in my hotel room watching tv and sewing my gala dress. This was necessary as it was becoming increasingly obvious that it was not going to be finished in time. Then Melissa and Tanya came and rescued me with early entry tickets to the amazing marketplace that was set up in the hotel. I fell in love with one stall in particular.Acme Notions.

So many cool vintage bits and bobs. I think I went back about six time

Then all of a sudden it was time for the Ice Cream Social! Time she does fly. I had my beaded flapper dress made from an eighties dress to wear and at the marketplace I found old fashioned Roll Garters. These are basically just giant hair ties that hold your your stockings up without having to wear a garter belt. There's a really great explanation of what that was for on the Vintage Dancer site. I also scored a cute pink flask which I tucked in my garter.

The flask looks just like this.

You can get your own on eBay

Somehow we manged to be late. Poor Melissa was still sewing sequins on her dress, so Tanya and I went down to check it out. She looked AMAZING. She will no doubt have fabulous photos on her own blog, Sewing with the Benevolent Devil. By the time we got there, the ice cream was all gone, so we did the logical thing and skipped out to the bar.

Yes we snuck out of the Ice Cream Social for cocktails. What?

But, thank goodness and Geri Rex, I have at least one picture of what I wore.

I'm pretty sure Tanya took this picture.

A bunch of us (see previous post of all kinds of ladies around a big table) had some dinner and I'm pretty sure that's all we did. It's fuzzy though.

Prohibition Pub Crawl 2013

What an amazing night! I can't even begin to describe the feeling of walking onto the cable car and being surrounded by beautifully dressed people right out of the 20's. Ive been to events before, like Dickens Fair where there are people dressed up and some people don't don't. But Ive never been to anything so immersive. It was magical.

I was terrible at getting everyone's names, but we all had so much fun

The pub crawl was put on by Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild . We started off at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco and then drove around on the trolley to various speakeasy type bars. We made quite the entrance, I'll tell you that. There was some elevator hooch swigging and spontaneous Charleston doing. All in all, a marvelous time.

The photos are a little blurry because they were taken on a moving trolley

My ever game boyfriend, Ken, who puts himself together by the way. He's the best accessory a girl could have.

I'll try to get some better close up shots soon. I also made the hat

Fringe Tutorial

I wanted to use fringe on my flapper dress, but I didn't have any hanging around the house and I can't spend money on anything right now. What I do have is yards and yards of cotton string that I got at the thrift store. I also couldn't find a tutorial for handmade fringe, so I made my own.

figure out how long you want your fringe to be, then wrap your string, yarn, floss or whatever have you around a book that is roughly twice that long.

Cut the string at the top and bottom of the book

You'll end up with a pile of string

Double each length of string and loop it over a cord

Pull the loose ends through the loop and tighten

do this a million times

Squish them together

I don't know if they will be swingy enough, since it's cotton. Any pig in a poke I say. We'll see what happens when I have a long length of it.

Actually pretty great. On the dress, it almost looks like marabou feathers

Flapper Dress in Process

I have lots more bling to throw at this thing. I'm also going to add a low waistband (hip band?) to kind of pooch the top and I'll probably toss the green fringy stuff on the bottom.

More gold! More movement!

I also need to make the hem shorter and move uneven. It's midnight time to call it. What me worry? I have one more night.

Time and Tide

I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't have time to do all the ribbonwork detail that I wanted to do on my Robe de Style.

Not by Saturday!

I may just go full on flapper after all. Like this.

Not pictured. Me fitting my size 14 body in this size 2 dress.

I do have lots of shiny things around the house. I grab beaded mother of the bride tops and dresses whenever I find them at the thrift store. So I'm going to throw every shiny thing I have at my mannequin ands what sticks.

oops

Vintage Snuggy

Well, the Cocoon coat is done, except for the closure. I'm just going to go ahead and say it. It looks like I'm wearing a bedspread.

On the upside, it also feels like I'm wearing a bedspread

I only have my iphone camera at the moment, and it's not very good at capturing color, but here's a closeup of the collar.

Gah, I hate doing piping

I think a fabric with more drape would help, but the back is still kind of a cool shape.

For a bedspread

Here's the dress I'm going to convert to a Robe de Style.

I've decided that the fact that I have hips will have to be pannier enough.

Its 100% Rayon. I tried my panniers on under it and they look way too big.

Make it Work Moment

Well, I had my first Make it Work moment. I have a feeling these will be a regular feature. One of the problems with using linens as fabric is that I don't always, well rarely, okay never, actually measure them. I just grab them  if they are good fabric. The Folkwear Cocoon Coat pattern is great because it only has three pieces, but the main piece is HUGE. So this happened...

On the upside it's so wide I don't have to sew a back seam

All is not lost. The design is fairly subtle, so I just cut the bottom of the piece separately on the adjustment line and I will piece it together. The actual garment gathers at that approximate point, so I'm hoping the piecing will be sort of hidden in the folds.

My cute little pattern weights that I made out of washers wrapped in string

Luckily the duvet cover I'm using as lining fabric was so big, I was able to cut out the full pattern piece and place it on the fold. So no back seam on that either. This is great because I am sewing the whole thing by hand and the event is in 6 days. I may or may not be slightly nuts.

Prohibition Pub Crawl

For my first blog post..Hi! I wanted to start out with something fun, that would introduce me to some local people who are in love with fashion and costume and historical sewing like I am. I've been binge devouring every blog I could find. Flashing between inspiration and intimidation at the amount of skill I'm seeing. My lovely and very game boyfriend( who is really joining in the spirit of play with me) and I are going to join the Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild in their Prohibition Pub Crawl. Although, I feel about 25, I'm, um, not, so I didn't really want to go full on flapper. I decided on this as my inspiration.

Boue Soeurs Robe de style

Since we are going to be outside, in San Fransisco, it's bound to be a bit chilly. So I am using the Folkwear Pattern, Poiret Cocoon Coat Pattern.

I'm also not wealthy, so I try to not buy new fabric when I can help it. Unfortunately, that means I can't always use 100% historical fabric. But I try to hit as close as possible. Maybe for Costume College (eek) I will splurge, but while I'm just beginning, I'd rather experiment with curtains, sheets and other assorted items from the thrift store. Here are some of my scores for the coat.

I was gifted a lovely, but very small embroidered indian shirt. I believe it is silk, but there is no label.It's very small, so I'd like to use it for the collar. I may have to do some careful piecing.

This is a coverlet or tablecloth, not sure which. The label was cut out, so I don't know the exact makeup. My best guess is cotton and rayon. I'm going to use this for the main fabric of the coat.

Subtle striping for lining. Taken from a duvet cover. %70 Silk %30 Polyester. This will be the lining fabric of the coat.