Done some shoppping

Today I was in Stockholm and did some shopping, my main reason for going was the fact that one big fabric store are closing this Sunday and they had 50% off on everything in the store. I was hoping to score some twill to use as corset linings for my corset line (my day job is a designer and producer of my own fetish brand) but all the twill had already gone. I'm not surprised, they started their sale a couple of weeks ago.
I did however score a perfect fabric for making myself a cute bum roll and it cost me only 15 SEK :)

I also visited Old Touch, a fabulous vintage store and got some very pretty embellishments. I finally ended my journey at IKEA and bought 2,85 m of the now infamous ANNELI fabric. Well, enough with boring text now and on with the pictures ;)


In the front we have a sturdy cotton fabric. It's a herringbone twill weawe and the stripes are also wowen. It's pure white and red, the light was not so good when I took the picture. In the background whe have ANNELI in black, I will use it as lining in the red velvet pierrot I have plans for.

Next are a couple of silk roses who need a little steam to get back in shape, they're a bit crusched from lying in a big pot in the store. I have not decied wich goes where yet but one or two of them will go on the wide brimmed straw hat that I've made as soon as I get it covered with fabric.




And last we have these ostrich plumes. There are two pink ones and one purple. I'm not so fond of the purple and the pink stuck together so I will take it a part and use them on different hats. The pink ones will probably end up on my tricorn and I think that the little jewelled buckle will serve as a front decoration on it.


I'm very pleased with todays haul. Over and out.

/L

A sketch and some research

A lot have been done since my last post. The pocket hoops are done, I just need to find a suitable string to tie them with. I will post a picture of them when string is found.I've got some nice shoes for cheap that I can redress.I have also made a sketch and lots of research and decided on what pattern to use.

But we start with my sketch:


When I made it, my plan was to make a gown/pet en l'air from the 1750's so I have a stomacher from that era on the sketch. I also made one side gown lenght and the other one short just too get both models in one picture.

But now I've discovered that I only have enough fabric for a pet en l'air from the 1770's so I will make a
comperé (button up) front instead as this was more common during that era. I will use the pattern on page 35 in Patterns of fashion by Janet Arnold. This pattern is for a sack dress but I will shorten it to get pet en l'air lenght. The good thing with this change of model is that I hopefully can get all sleeve cuffs, all ruchings and the stomacher front out of the same damask as the jacket. Wich is more period than my other soloution wich was to use a plain silk taffeta for ruchings and blue velvet for cuffs and stomacher.

On this sketch I have made the petticoat of silk taffeta with a self ruching. That's because the stiped fabric I aaawed about in prior posts was out of stock when I got to the store :(
This is what you get when you are to slow with making decisions :(

But I've still not completely decided if I should go with plain taffeta, I've found these fabrics at an online shop:






Both are 100% silk taffeta that is 54" wide. I'm thinking of a striped petticoat with one ruffle of the stripe on top a wider ruffle of the plain taffeta. I think it will look absolutely fabulous but I'm not 100% sure if it's historically correct. I've seen striped petticoats on both survived garments from this times and on fashion plates but they are always worn with a striped dress. I've not seen any proof of a not striped top and a striped bottom. Right now my inside historian and my inside designer has a big war going on... :P

Anyway, I think I will finish the pet en l'air first and then see what kind of petticoat I would like to wear with it. That gives my historian and my designer time to agree and it will buy me some time to do more research on the subject.

/L

The fabrics so far

The velvet fabric that will turn into a stomacher and cuffs is in the top of the picture, at the bottom we have the cotton damask for the jacket/gown and in the middle you can se a small piece of upholstery velvet that I will use for redressing the shoes.
The colors are pretty accurate, but all the fabrics looks more shiny in the photo than in real life and the white parts on the damask are much stronger in the picture.
Here are a close up of the damask (with very distorted colors):


We move on to yesterdays major fabric finds, 6 meters of fine quality, light weight linen that I got for 49 SEK/M! (that's about 6$/m).
In the top right corner are the chemise fabric, in the middle we have a (coming to be) petticoat and on the bottom are an old linen sheet made of a twill weave that I found for 75 SEk in a thrift store.

On this picture below I'm trying to show the transparency of the white linen fabric, thats my hand barely showing under it.


And now for the hard decision...which one of those should I go with for the jupe...
First we have the striped fabric, it looks like the one in the picture below but instead of the green stripe there are a light blue one and the fabric are not so dark as i appears here. (I borrowed this picture from Fuschia , go check out her blog, it is awesome!).


Then we have this lovely silk taffeta from ebay:


I have a really hard time with this...should I listen to my wallet or not?

/L