Attempting a Gibson or Edwardian Blouse

Hello all,

It's been a long time since I took the time to sit down and chat.  Grant you, it's been a long time since I've been able to do some good old sewing.  So long, in fact, that I'm going to discuss the Edwardian blouse I worked on last summer.

My wardrobe sadly lacked a good old basic blouse, and I had a hankering for a nice Edwardian style.  My good friend lent me her Folkwear pattern, since we're close to the same size, and I had the added advantage of borrowing her completed blouse as well, which allowed me to figure out where I could cut my pattern back a bit.

I used the Folkwear Gibson Girl pattern, #205.    Here's an image of the package and the diagrams for the pattern. 

Their design could be quite fancy, as shown below.  However, unlike what you see below, their collar is considerably shorter than what they show in this photo - it's more what you see in the pattern design sketch above right. 

I opted for the non-fancy, non-pleated yoke, as it's less work.  I also decided not to have a belt at the waist, since I was planning to always have it tucked into a skirt waistband.  I decided upon a nice white and green cotton striped material (which tends toward a seersucker finish when it's been washed, if one doesn't iron it out).  I thought the stripes would look nice going vertically along the bodice and sleeves, and running  horizontally along the yoke, collar, and cuffs.  (Though I still managed to accidentally cut out the yoke with the stripes going vertically ... why I always buy extra fabric!)

Here's the blouse in progress, yoke and bodice attached front and back, but with no sleeves or collar yet.  I opted for a small edging of lace inserted between yoke and bodice.

Before attaching the collar, I had to figure out how I wanted to trim it.  I had a variety of lace pieces around as options.

I even contemplated a little lace jabot.

 

However, after polling my sewing pals on Facebook, I decided I'd go for edging with the really narrow lace, since my neck isn't terribly long.  I also remembered I had a bone or ivory piece which I found in an old jar of buttons I'd bought at an antiques market, and so I added that to the centre front of the collar.  (Surprisingly, I forgot it was there when I washed the blouse the first time, and it survived the process entirely unscathed!)

Here is how the front looked, with the ivory piece and all the different laces combined.

And here is the finished blouse in all it's glory, front and back.  The back attaches with hooks and eyes along the opening which goes from collar to the bottom of the yoke. 

All in all, a great little blouse, and easy to make - it took me a week of frittering away in the evenings to make this.  I kept with the pintucked sections in the back, where one would normally have the belt running, as it ensured that, when tucked into a skirt, it would automatically lay nicely.

Alas, I realize I have no decent photo of me wearing this blouse, just one very tiny, very blurry photo, from a local picnic.

The Steamwench's Jewelry Box, or, Come See What I've Made!

Hello, all.

As I frantically prepare for my 4th ever experience as a vendor (and all within the last 12 months), this time at my second Christmas Fair, at Imaginarius Fantasticus III, I thought I'd share the contents of the Steamwench's Jewelry Box.

Making jewelry was something I had done just a couple of times, for myself.  I had thought about making it to sell, but I seemed to have so many other things to do, and I wasn't sure how to go about it.  Then, just under a year ago, the opportunity to vend essentially fell into my lap, and even I realized it would be foolish to not give it a whirl. 

What followed was a frantic two solid months of getting all the basic supplies I needed and tinkering away at my tiny work-desk every evening after work, and each weekend.  The pace was frankly insane.  I spent more than I had intended on supplies - which shouldn't have been a surprise, as a costumer, I generally seem to run on the "buy more" principle, since nothing is worse than running out of supplies mid-project.  I also had a bit of misunderstanding about just how much product I needed to make.  I could have made half of what I did, and still had plenty.  Good news is, it has meant I have not needed to create things at such a rabid pace since.

For several years, I had been collecting lovely vintage keys, broken pocket-watch and watch parts, and oddments of broken old and neglected jewelry with interesting detail bits or pieces. I enjoy taking all these old items, and combining them creatively with new or other old items, to create jewelry that has a steampunk or neo-Edwardian aesthetic.  I've also been enjoying creating a few entirely new pieces.  

As we come up to the next Imaginarius Fantasticus, which has a steampunk theme, and at which I will be both vending and running the local steampunk community promotional table & info table, I thought I'd share some photos of some of the jewelry I've created.  (And a shout-out to local Vancouverites, come on by the show if you want to check out my stuff in person!)  

 

Wish me luck this coming weekend!  And as I hastily put this to press, I have actually changed some of my pieces shown here with some awesome improvements!  (The hot air balloon earrings and pendants now have lovely little silver baskets under them!)

And now, adieu!

A Time-Travelling Chemist-Druggist, or, Steampunk Quackery

Greetings, all, and Happy Haunting time of year.

As you settle in with your cup of tea, allow me to, once again, apologize profusely for the infrequency of my sessions here in my Salon.  The ever-difficult battle between making a living for myself so I can keep myself in the fashion to which I've become accustomed, organizing events for the local steampunks, and generally having my fingers in too many pies, leaves me little time for costuming and far less time to share it.

However, I am now able to update you one of my latest endeavors.  At the start of this year, I decided it would be a fun idea to create a steampunk quack doctor or chemist/druggist.  This would be a heavily prop-oriented ensemble, versus costume-oriented.  A quack remedy chemist would be all about the medicines, cures, and promotion. 

I quickly lost myself in research into quack medicines, which is a fascinating subject, and covers easily almost three full centuries.  Bizarre nostrums, paregorics and cures really peaked in the 1700's, and were still quite rampant and weird right through the Victorian era.  It wasn't until the early 1900's that controls started coming into better effect.  Caroline Rance's amazing website, The Quack Doctor was a huge inspiration, and place where I lost many, many hours of fascinated reading.  

Creating a quack persona was one thing, but to steampunk it up, I decided she should be a time-travelling chemist & druggist.  Of course, she must have a set of phenomenal credentials, so I created the credentials of PC, DC, TTE and OMG (because why not!).  In order, that becomes Pharmaceutical Chemist, Dispensing Chemist, Time Travel Expert, and OmniMateria Goods (allowing me to use, animal, mineral, vegetal, and manmade components in my medicaments). Using my own initials and the surname of a favourite SCA persona I'd created years before, voila, T.L. Swyfte, Travelling Chemist. came into being:

This is the design I created for my advertising.  This small sign ended up as a small card in my hat, the inside panel of my medicaments box, and the front page of the advertising booklet of my products, which I created.

I had a convenient medium-sized wooden box I'd picked up at a thrift store with a mind to use it for something, and voila, this became my portable product display, with the addition of a front closure, side catches and two side rings to hold the leather straps to enable to carry the box around.

The truly fun part of this persona was creating the list & descriptions of my products.  Hours and hours of research inspired me to create a selection of my own nostrums, all carrying my trademark name, Swyfte's, and several of which were almost wholly taken from actual medicines from the past.  

Once I'd come up with a list of products, I selected my favourites and wrote up an advertisement for each one, and with the assistance of the many wonderful copyright-free vintage borders and graphics you can find on http://thegraphicsfairy.com/, created the small ads for my product booklet.  I printed the booklet in black and white, with only the cover in colour, deliberately restricting myself to two colours, to keep things more Victorian in feel.  

A stack of my product booklets

My frontispiece of "company" advertising, and the advert for my Solar Re-Animating Solar Tincture, which is based on an actual quack medicine (and the advert not much different from the original - I just added vampiric conditions to zip it up.  Would have added zombification, except I was running out of room.

Of course, every quack druggist ought to have a paregoric to cure everything.  With dodgy claims of "safe" opium.  I'm quite proud of my Combobulating Serum - entirely my own concept.  Who among us doesn't have days when we wish for some serum of this ilk, to clear our befogged and discombobulated minds! 

Other chemists will produce plasters, but only Swyfte will give you Daily Reassuring Plasters, to both ease your discomfort and to soothe, reassure, and comfort.  And our Defibulating Lozenges are quite popular - reveal untruths by plying suspected fibbers with our cleverly disguised lozenges daily! 

Of course I had to include our own Coca Wine - given it was such a common product that even in the 1890's this could be purchased from your Sears Roebuck catalogue!  And what steampunk gentleman hasn't longed for impressively manly moustaches and muttonchops?  Achieve them with ease with our powerful tonic.

Ah, Time Travel's attendant unpleasant side effect for so many folks - pesky hiccoughs!  Annoying, and downright dangerous if one happens to find oneself trying to discretely hide from predatory beasts (or men) in a past or future aggressive setting.  Our lozenges will help!  And we had to have Ambition Pills (another actual "medicine" from quack history.  And the advert wording very much taken from the original.

The back cover

The next step was, of course the "products" for display.  I purchased small bottles online and whenever I saw appropriately-sized bottles. Playing about with the advertisements I'd created and more fun graphics, I created labels for a selection of my products.

Putting together products, advertising, handouts, and the box, resulted in my travelling case below, which I then carried strapped around my neck and waist.

The joy of this persona is that the clothes are far less relevant.  I took an old military hat, added a pin (Girl Genius trilobite!) and tucked in an advertising card.  The rest was just shirt, corset, long skirt.  Here is the final product of my time-traveling quack chemist, BEST SCIENTIFIC Medicaments in hand - ready to hit the hallways and hawk my wares!

And finally, before I go, I would like to once again thank my main inspiration and sourcing for this concept, Caroline Rance, creator of the fabulous website: http://thequackdoctor.com/, and author of Kill-Grief, and most recently, The Quack Doctor (available on Amazon.ca and elsewhere).

A Breezy Little Post

This is simply a breezy little post to check in and say hello, written in snatched moments between my day-time job, and sleeping (really, time when I should be sewing).  

Our local steampunk community's Second Annual Brass in the Grass picnic in Queen Elizabeth Park is taking place on Saturday July 20 (open to all- we're a friendly, goofy, costume-crazy bunch - details are here if you're interested), and of course, true to form, I am frantically doing last minute sewing in preparation.  Of course I had to have a Gibson-styled blouse.  Of course I have no skills at setting collars, cuffs or sleeves.  Of course this process involves considerable swearing, lots of unpicking of stitches, and considerable longing glances at the bottles of wine in the rack.  

Am I the only one who does this last minute sewing?  I didn't used to be that person, back in my old Society for Creative Anachronism days.   And what is it with suddenly coming up with at least one other great "wow I should do this" idea, at the peak of the rushed insanity of last-minute sewing?  (Today's inspiration came while in Dressew buying ribbon, of "ooh I should make a cool picnic sheet for steampunk picnics" and resulted in me buying cheap cream & grey striped fabric and rug-binding.)  Truly.  I think I have a disease.  Some crazy-sewing-lady disease.

Ah well, it will go nicely with my crazy-organizer-lady disorder, jittery-jewelry-maker malady and compulsive-event-creator syndrome.

On that note, I'm off to consider doing just a touch more sewing before I go to bed.  Oh right.  I have to work in the morning.  Perhaps, not.

Scorching Summertime Steampunk

Well ... more neo-Edwardian costuming than steampunk, but then, summertime heat & humidity is less conducive to lots of brass and sweaty goggles.

Last summer, with two summer steampunk picnics looming, I realized none of my usual clothes were remotely suitable to an outdoor picnic in July & August in Vancouver.  My stuff was more appropriate to air-conditioned hotel conventions, not for lounging on grass in the heat and sunshine.  You try to lounge in a corset - I challenge you!

I decided this was a great opportunity to make some neo-Edwardian picnic gear.  Sans pattern.  Despite my very basic sewing knowledge.

And today's post is to show you what I came up with.  It wasn't optimal (I'm neither young nor lissome, which this outfit would have suited better), but it was cheap, moderately easy, comfortable (although the day I wore it was scorching) and looked okay.  (More on where I went astray later!)

I didn't have a lot of money to spend on the endeavor, so I did some mad cost-effective thrifting.  Below are the finds I came up with.  Today I will deal with the skirt, and I will post about the hat separately.

Above is some eyelet lace found thrifting.  It and the other items in the wee baggie were $2.  Below is a net curtain (with an Ikea label!) and some cheap curtains I found in a thrift store.

When I bought the curtains above, I thought ... hey ... it's a ready made skirt - already with ruffle at the hem!  I just need to get rid of the ugly lace back panels, sew them up the side seams, and gather them!

Now, in reality, what happened was I had to unpick all the seams (ALL THE SEAMS) so I could make maximum use of the limited fabric width.  I also unpicked the top folding hem that would have gone on the rod, so I had room for the gathering, and to make the waistband.  Waste not, want not.  

The ruffle was on the plain side. 

So I added the pre-ruffled eyelet trim I'd bought at a thrift store - turned out there was just enough to do the job!

And, since that was looking a little plain, I added another shorter layer of lace on top.

Ruffles added, I then trimmed the skirt so it would be just above the floor (when waistband was added) and sewed the panels together all the way it up one side seam, then partway up the other side (leaving an opening to get in and out of).  Then I pinned it to my dress model, along with a 1970's neo-Edwardian blouse I'd scored in a vintage shop for $25, to see where I stood.  I only had enough width for a relatively loose, light gather.

 

Since Edwardian skirts tended to have gauzy layers for interest, I decided to add netting as an overlayer, so I cut it to size, short enough that it would show the ruffles at skirt hem.  I added yet more lace to the net hem, and then gathered it at the waist.

I wasn't 100% happy with the look, but I was committed to it at this point.  I started playing with ideas for the top / hip area, and the waistline.
I very much liked the look of the first option, to the left, with the sleek lace panel at the hips.  However, a bit of playing told me that arranging that flat panel of lace sleekly on a curve, so it would drape nicely over my hips when standing, and accommodate me when I sat, was easier said than done.  It looked great on the dummy, I couldn't figure out how to do it properly on me, with my limited sewing skills.  So irksome.  

So I opted for the right-hand version, though opting for a waistband rather than a sash.  It was easy to sew on top of all the gathered layers, and easy to close with sturdy hooks and eyes.  

And here is the final product, worn with another cotton blouse (courtesy Value Village), and the hat that will follow in a later post, at the First Annual Brass in the Grass picnic, in July 2012.  In future, I will not likely use this belt, but may design a sash for it.  I also may tear it down and remove the netting (which got a bit sapped in the tree-climbing).  

Picnic photo courtesy of Sam Quo Vadis: http://www.studiostar.ca 

(my cropping on the second photo)

Bustle Pad Creation

Hello all.  So, further to the bustle post previously, this is the promised post on making a small bustle pad.  My goal was a small, lightweight bustle pad, producing a small pouf.

My materials were some scrap black lining fabric, interfacing, some poly stuffing sheeting, and some black crinoline-weight netting I had lying around.

I started by measuring the distance across the top of my tuckus, where I wanted the pad to sit.  Based on this, I drew out the following pattern on paper, and cut it out of two pieces of the black lining, with seam allowance added.

Out of the same patter, without seam allowance, I cut a piece of the lining and a piece of the poly padding (which I'd bought for my tea cozy).  I pinned the interfacing on the lining, to provide a stiffened back, and placed the batting on top of that, to give a bit of body to the pad's structure.

Left - cut out pieces of fabric, interfacing & batting    Right - interfacing pinned to lining.

Left - batting pinned on top of interfacing.       Right - both now sewn onto fabric base.

The next step was to sew the other piece of fabric on and then flip it inside out and hand stitch closed, to produce the pad base.  I also sewed a line across the top, to leave a convenient point for the pad to bend forward.

Once that was done, I cut out three widths of netting, double the width I wanted the net pouf, and at least 3 times the length of the pad's maximum width.  I used the full width I had, since it was more than 3 times as long as the base.  Here they are, faintly showing up on my floor, cut out.  

Next step was to double over the pieces lengthwise, and run a gathering stitch along the side with both edges, to create a tube.

Once gathering stitching was done, I gathered all three tubes of netting.

Left - before I gathered the tubes of netting.   R - after gathering the netting to fit the base.

I attached the gathered tubes one at a time, starting with the widest one, at the bottom, and then adding the middle width, and then the narrowest at the top.

The end result still wasn't quite poufy enough, and I had lots of netting kicking around, so I used more netting to stuff into the large and medium tubes, to create more pouf.  (There wasn't room to tuck more into the narrowest tube, which was already pretty puffy on it's own.)

I decided to use a hook-and-eye system to attach the bustle to any particular skirt - so I have large hooks on the back of the bustlepad, and will attach matching large flat eyes to any skirt I want to use the bustlepad with.

This was a very simple, very easy bustlepad, which produces a prodigious amount of pouf for its light weight.  Contrary to what I've heard, the crinoline as done here (tubes and stuffed with more crinoline net) seems pretty resilient.