If you sew a coat, the weather will be unseasonably warm.
If you sew a summer top, the weather will be unseasonably cold.
If you sew a full skirt, a crazy windstorm will arise.
All sewing of silk or pretty summer clothes will result in rain.
Alexander-Hugo Bakker-Korff, The Seamstress, 1880
So, in the terribly changeable Wellington spring weather, what’s a seamstress to make?
I’ve found a way to satisfy my desire to make a whole new dress for Windy Lindy 2010. I’m helping Madame Ornata make one.
Madame Ornata doesn’t swing dance, but she does dance, and she loves to dress up.
So I convinced her to come to Windy Lindy.
It turns out that she had a half cut out version of the notorious Vintage Vogue 2241, an original 1931 design.
Now, 2241 is notorious for being difficult to adjust, fussy to put together, making no logical sense as a dress or a pattern, and (worst of all) looking like a sack when you do figure it out, unless you happen to have the approximate figure of a snake.
The pattern looks like this:
Now, Madame Ornata’s figure is deliciously un-snake-like, she doesn’t like to show off her back, and she needs to be able to dance in the dress without it falling off her shoulders. So the dress as it is was a no-go.
But she already had the skirt cut out in the most fabulous sapphire blue silk charmeuse.
So we used the skirt pattern pretty much as it is, but adapted (read: tossed the pattern and drafted a whole new one on Isabelle) the bodice to suit Madame O.
Drafting the bodice on Isabelle
It now has a V-neck, a fitted bust and waist, and a fairly high back so the sleeves won’t fall off. It looks like this:
Madame O's Vogue 2241 re-do
It’s fabulous. I can’t wait to show you pictures of the finished dress. But for now, Madame O is still hard at work on it.
The fabric is a little less vivid blue, a little more sapphire in real life.
1) I have polls! So if you are to lazy to post comments (boo, ’cause I love comments) you can just express your opinion in the poll in the sidebar. This week’s poll is about what dress I should wear to Windy Lindy 2010.
2) Am I the only person that was really, really disappointed by the Steampunk fashions on show at DragonCon? Not that I got to go. Or even would (it’s a geek too far for me), but I was thinking that it should have the BEST steampunk fashions on display. Right? Right? Apparently not.
Go check out some photos on Epbot and tell me if you don’t agree that most of them are just, well, not very interesting or innovative. Super, major letdown.
On the bright side, this means that my costuming friends and the bloggers I follow are insanely talented – ’cause their stuff is so creative and awesome.
Even the monkeys in the Wellington Zoo are in awe of y'all!
