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.