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White Zombie and the 3 hour jacket

Published by The Dreamstress

Originally I was only contracted to make Elizabeth/Madge’s shroud dress for the PorcelainToy White Zombie music video, but a few days before shooting began it became clear that the jacket they had found for Emile to wear as Neil just wasn’t cutting it, so I said I would whip up something.

Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre and John Harron as Neil Parker in his tropical jacket & jodhpurs

And whip up something was right:  I was still making last minute adjustments to the dress and embroidering pearls on it at every opportunity, so I didn’t have a lot of spare time.  The jacket was going to have to be fast and easy, and adjustable: I had no time for a fitting!

So I had a mad rummage through my fabric stash, came up with some calico/muslin* that was the right colour and handle, and then found a jacket pattern I have used for Mr Dreamy.  Luckily Emile of PorcelainToy is almost exactly the same size, so I could be a little less concerned about fit.

Even with a good pattern I didn’t have enough time to make a jacket by myself, so I called in a favour from Shell, and she came over to my place and we got to work.

She cut the muslin while I sewed pearls on the dress, and then I pinned a few jacket pieces together, handed them to her at the sewing machine, pinned the next pieces while she sewed, and pressed the sewn pieces as they came off the machine and pinned them to the next pieces.

With both of us working on it full speed the jacket just came together in just a few hours.  We started at 3, and by 6 we had a jacket.

I had to do the sleeve-setting in, the buttons, and the collar by myself as that was a bit above Shell’s comfort zone, but really the whole tandem sewing thing is an awesome time saver: you don’t waste anything walking from your machine to the iron!

When the jacket was finished Shell looked at it and said “You tricked me!  I don’t know how to make a jacket, and you got me to do it!”  Now I just need to trick Shell into making her wedding dress (spoilers!)

The jacket is just simple calico/muslin, flat lined with a crisp calico/muslin.  It’s unlined, so that I could adjust the size if I needed to.  For three hours I’m super happy with it.  The collar is a bit weak and wonky, but it’s been years since I did one and I didn’t have a direction sheet, so I still call it a win.

Emile and Elizabeth share a moment

Elizabeth watches Emile kill zombies

Rescuing Elizabeth

Tomorrow I’ll show you images of Emile in the jacket from a seriously awesome photoshoot.

 

* See this post if you wonder why I am using both terms

 

Rate the dress: Extremely red in 1865

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I tried very hard to pick an interesting dress, but some of you still complained that Jessie Franklin Turner’s harlequin inspired evening frock was boring.  I think it’s just a difference of perception: for me, cut is what makes a garment most intriguing, but others may be more colour or fabric focused.  While a few of you loved the dress, most of you, even if you thought it was interesting, found it uninspiring, and it received an very middle of the road, uninspired 5 out of 10.

Since muted colours and fascinating cut weren’t your thing, how about very basic cut, and totally over the top colour?

Dress, ca 1865, American, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Afternoon dress, ca 1865, American, Metropolitan Museum of Art

This military influenced dress from ca 1865 celebrates the new vogue for extremely bright colours sparked by the invention of the first aniline dyes at the end of the 1850s.  Whether the brilliant red silk of the dress is the product of the new coal based dyes I am not sure, but even in a room full of violent mauvine purples and vivid acid greens, this dress would hold its own.

Is competing with a bunch of other colours that are all shouting really the way to go though?  Especially in a frock that already makes its military leanings quite clear?  Perhaps the wiser sartorial stratagem would be to rise above the fray in cool, calming neutrals.  Or do militant colours coordinate perfectly with military trimmings to win the fashion battle?  You be the judge.

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

18th century menswear: the waistcoat

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve told you all about the 18th century jacket I made.  Here are the construction details of the waistcoat that goes with it.

The mostly finished waistcoat

The fabric is a white cotton with a slightly irregular diagonal rib woven in.  The breeches are made out of the same fabric.  There is more info on the fabric and trims here.

Fabric, silver trim, and not-so-beautiful buttonholes

Like the jacket, the pattern basically comes from Costume Close-Up, though I made so many changes that CCU ended up being just a basic guide to 18th century waistcoat construction.

I patterned up the waistcoat without having anyone to try it on, and I was really worried that it would be too small, so I used a clever feature that I saw on an extent waistcoat (unfortunately I can’t remember where from!) and left the back seam open, with ties to make it adjustable.  I’ve also seen images of waistcoats with closed back seams and ties, and waistcoats that laced up the back.  The LACMA has a pattern for one.

Back ties

As with the jacket, I managed to do a clever sewing thing where I finished the two front edges, sandwiched the front between the back pieces, sewed them, and then folded them back and sewed the back seam with handstitching, so that the waistcoat was a bit sturdier than if I had just bag-lined it.

Tiny hand stitches to finish the back seam

Of course, this type of finishing meant that when I actually got to try the waistcoat on Daniil and it was too big the only (well, within the timeframe) way to make it smaller  was to tie the back as tightly as possible, and cut down the front.   Since I had already finished and sewed buttonholes on the front we had to hide the old buttonholes so I killed two birds with one stone and  bound the now-raw edges with the silver trim, which was wide enough to also hide the remnants of any buttonholes.  At least I hadn’t cut them open!

Silver trim to hide fitting issues

The one thing I didn’t finish with the waistcoat was the armholes: I just ran out of time before the Grandeur & Frivolity talk, and they wouldn’t be seen beneath the jacket.  I’ll do a fold-under or quickly finish them off with binding at some point.

Unfinished armholes

So that’s my first waistcoat.  It’s far from perfect, or perfectly historical, but my next one will be much better!