1920s Beaded Dress

At the end of March I had just sold my house and moved back in with my parents (temporarily while we find a new house). I received an invitation to go to the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governer's Island in New York in June. I booked a flight, bought my ticket, and started looking at what I could conceivably make in the next two and half months with zero sewing supplies as they were all packed away in storage. I was perusing Pinterest looking at 1920s dresses when I stumbled across this gorgeous turquoise color beaded dress.

Those who know me best know I'm a sucker for anything teal, aqua, turquoise or variations thereof. The pin was a broken link so I reverse image searched it on Google and found the original Etsy listing for the dress. Sadly, it was a very old listing and had sold in August of 2013, but I needed it. I was trying to think of ways I could make something like it, but I decided that something like it wouldn't suffice, it had to be that dress.

A fellow costumer I follow on Instagram, Caroline (dressed_in_time, Dressed In Time (blog) ), had been posting about a dress and a few other items she was tambour beading, and it looked like what I needed to accomplish the beading on this dress. I had no experience with tambour beading but sent a few messages to Caroline with my beginner questions and she was super helpful. I took some tips from her posts about the beading process and purchased Delica seed beads from Fire Mountain Beads and Shipwreck Beads, as well as silk Guterman thread from Joann's. Around the same time I sourced my fabric.

I was nervous about trying tambour beading for the first time and was fully prepared for it to be a hot mess and go very badly. For this reason I was nervous about buying a nice fabric like silk, even though the original dress was silk crepe. I ended up finding a sale poly double georgette that looked to be the perfect teal color, so I bought a couple yards and waited anxiously. My fabric was delivered about a week later and I came home from work to rip open the package and nearly cried. It was not even close to teal. The color I received was a neon/electric blue monstrosity. This just would not do. I consulted a friend who has a bit of experience dyeing fabric and decided to overdye the fabric in yellow. I cut several swatches, and followed the directions on the label. The directions and web research indicated poly fabrics took longer to take dye so I needed to dye them for longer, but my swatch batches told me differently. I got a perfect teal color with about 5 minutes in the dye bath. I put in my full length, and held my breath. It came out beautifully! With fabric of the right color, and beads at hand I was ready to frame my fabric and get to work.

Full length dyed fabric, with strip swatch of original color.

My dad helped me build my tambour frame. He used some scrap 1x whitewood pieces he had lying around. I needed to frame the entire length of the dress, and to keep the frame a manageable size decided to bead each half of the dress separately. The frame ended up being approximately 60" x 35". We stapled twill tape to the length of each board, and bought 4 c-clamps to hold the corners. I followed framing instructions from Robert Haven's videos on YouTube, and voila!

While I had been waiting for all my supplies to arrive, I was carefully drafting my beading pattern. I was copying an original dress and the only thing I had available were the listing photos. Thankfully, the listing included garment measurements so I knew the original dress was 46" long. I found a scaling website that allowed me to upload a photo of the original dress, drag and drop a line the length of the dress and enter in the known measurement. From there I was able to drag and drop anywhere else on the photo and it would give me approximate measurements based on the scale of the photo. I drew out a rough sketch of the design and copied down all of the measurements. Then I used another website to print grid/graph paper with 1/8" lines and taped them all together. Then I started drawing. I worked with landmark measurements first like length and width, then moved inward to the smaller designs. It took a few days, a good eraser, and a lot of patience but by the end I had a workable pattern. Once I framed up my fabric I transferred my pattern. I wanted my markings to be something that would last but be easily removed in the end. I ended up using wet chalk. I just used regular chalk pieces and dipped them in water as I went. When they dried the markings stayed a little better than using plain chalk. Then I got to beading.

Beading pattern drawn on graph paper

Chalk pattern on wrong side of fabric

Paper pattern pinned to tambour framed fabric.

I learned a lot about the tambour beading process during the course of this project. I wouldn't say it was easy, but it took some finessing and getting use to before I was really proficient at it. In the end I probably could have gone with silk fabric and did just fine, but hindsight is 20/20. Robert Haven's videos were very helpful as well as a couple of others on YouTube. Just search for tambour beading, or tambour embroidery, or luneville embroidery. Some videos were just about embroidery and not beading, but I found those videos on direction and how to hold the needle, and starting/stopping to be very helpful in the overall practice. Some fellow costumers have been lucky enough to go to Robert Haven's workshop on tambour beading, but I didn't have the time or luxury for that so I ended up teaching myself and feel like I did pretty well. But, take that statement with a grain of salt. I've always been pretty good at picking things up on my own with very little instruction or no direct instruction. If that's not how you learn then it would probably benefit you to take a hands on course.

Beading is done from the wrong side of the fabric, beads are strung on a length of thread on the underside (right side) of the frame, needle is poked through wrong side, beads put into position and the thread wrapped around the hooked needle and pulled back through. Tails are woven in and tied off later.

Finished beading still on the frame.

Costume College 2018

The time has come, and gone, Costume College 2018 is over. Here's a rundown of the weekend and my overall thoughts on my first ever Costume College!

The days leading up to departure:
Holy moly. In years past I've observed the CoCo craziness and the late night last minute sewing frenzy. I promised myself this would NOT be me. I was going to carefully plan out deadlines and have my dresses done so that I could relax before I left. THIS DID NOT HAPPEN. In the days leading up to CoCo I got very little sleep. I was up late sewing, and then up early for work, and then spent my evenings feverishly sewing into the wee hours of the morning. Rinse. Repeat.

Thursday:
Proof that nothing planned ever goes the way you want it to. I had planned on leaving around 8 AM because I have a roughly 4 hour drive to the airport. Well, I left later than I wanted to (by 40 minutes) and then got pulled over on my way to the airport. Why did I get pulled over? For driving in the left lane. Something I only do to pass and yell at other drivers for staying in too long. The problem was that a woman in the right lane kept slowing down when I would get behind her, when I'd get over to pass she'd speed up so that I couldn't. It was this constant game and I was irritated. I like to set my cruise control and just go. So, tired of playing the game I got into the left lane to pass her and she sped up and I just stayed there. Cue Mr. State Patrol coming up from behind and deciding I was in the wrong. I calmly explained the situation to him and he let me go with a warning. Then, when i finally arrived in Denver I was 15 miles from the airport when I hit deadlock traffic and sat forever. By the time I reached the parking lot I had an hour until my flight left. I quickly parked and ran to the shuttle bus. I picked the one super nice shuttle bus driver who kindly waited for everyone, I felt like it took forever to get to the airport. By the time I ran up to the check in counter I had 30 minutes until departure and they wouldn't let me on. I could check in and try to get through security sans checked baggage, or I could find another flight. Since all of my CoCo dresses that I had worked so hard on were in my checked bag I couldn't leave it behind. The ticket agent told me the next available flight wasn't until later that night at 7:55. While I didn't want to miss the pool party I did want to eventually get to LA so I wasn't going to be picky and accepted the later flight. They wouldn't let me check in for another 2 hours so I went and found a seat to catch my breath from running and cool down. About 15 minutes later I received a notification on my phone from the airline letting know my flight had been cancelled. So I went back to the check in counter and they begrudgingly told me they had no more flights that day leaving for LAX. However, given that they were a major airline they could book me on another major airline for no additional cost. There was a 10:55 pm flight on another airline that I was booked on. I was advised to go check in with a ticket agent at that airline and see if they could put me on standby for an earlier flight. Lucky for me they had a flight leaving in an hour and put me on standby for that. I ran to security, and then ran from security to the gate and made it in time. I've never flown standby before so I inquired about the process and they informed me that I would have to wait and they'd be calling standby passengers to check in if seats were available. I was getting nervous as there were a few airline employees trying to get on the flight as well and they were talking loudly to each other that there weren't any seats. Five minutes later they call my name and hand me my ticket. The agent told me hesitantly that all they had available was a middle seat in the back of the plane. I nearly screamed, "I'LL TAKE IT!" but I maintained my frazzled composure and explained that at this point I just wanted on a plane, so I would not be picky. Then I thanked him profusely and finally boarded a plane. Lucky for me I was only an hour behind my original schedule...SCORE!

Two hours later we landed in a very hot and muggy Los Angeles, and I took a shuttle to the hotel. I checked in with the very lovely Marriott staff and as I was walking to the elevator I ran into my long lost friend, Rachel. I say long lost because we knew each other way back when we were gangly awkward teenagers in middle school. Then some middle school girl drama happened and we stopped hanging out. I lost touch with her after that and even though we went to the same school we started hanging out in different groups, then I moved away. Since then we've both graduated, had kids, gotten married, moved to different states. It wasn't until a few years ago we reconnected on Facebook and I saw that she was in the middle of sewing some historical clothing. As it happened I was just getting into the costuming world and we connected over a similar interest. The rest is kind of history. It's crazy to think that you can meet someone in person for the first time in 15 years and it's like no time has passed. Form there I quickly went up to my room, got settled in and dressed for the pool party.

I didn't really know what to expect from Costume College or the pool party. First thing, the pool really isn't involved. It's more a pool adjacent party. But there were so many people dressed in fabulous costumes I can see why the water was avoided. A lot of the groups were people meeting up with friends they haven't seen since the last Costume College, or in a while, or ever. Rachel met up with another online friend that she's never met in person before, Kat. Rachel, Kat, and I know each other from an online Titanic role playing game we play every year. Rachel and Kat played together years ago, and then Rachel got me to join up in 2017. It was kind of mind blowing to see everyone together for once. I'm mildly socially awkward so I wasn't actively seeking out people to meet at the pool party, but there were many outgoing attendees who introduced themselves. I tried to remember names, but I usually have to see someone a few times before it sticks, that became a problem later when everyone looked different in/out of costumes and were changing costumes several times per day. With the variations of dresses, hairstyles, and hair pieces, it was hard to remember faces and successfully attach them to names.

Also, it was hot and balmy that night. So we stuck around outside for a little bit before heading into the air conditioned lobby and spending the rest of the evening there.

Rachel and I dressed in our 50s best

Some day I'll post a picture of my Aunt from the 60s, it's crazy how much we look alike

Goofing off

Trying on Kat's fabulous tiara

Friday:

Friday was Day 1 of Costume College. The first official day of classes and what-have-yous. The plan was to get up, have breakfast, and attend Freshman Orientation. But when I knocked on Rachel and Amanda's door at 7:30 they were still asleep! I waited for them to drag themselves out of bed and then we went down to breakfast. Needless to say, we missed orientation. Oh well! Breakfast was tasty at least. I went to a few classes, attended a limited class on Ribbon Shoe Cockades, and then met Amanda down at the pool for lunch while Rachel was in her limited class. I brought my Gala dress to sew on while we sat on the patio because I desperately needed to finish some things on it before Saturday night. It needed hemmed, buttons added to the cuffs, and trim added. I managed to get it hemmed completely that afternoon before I had to go upstairs and get dressed for the Friday Night Social. Amanda and I had a great time getting to know one another while we had lunch, and she promised to help sew my buttons on my cuffs because sewing buttons is her favorite. I wasn't going to turn down the help!

Rachel and I had pre-planned out outfits for the events and coordinated with Titanic era dresses for Friday. Rachel chose to re-create a dress from movie Titanic (1997) and I made an original design. There was a whole group making movie repros and original Titanic era dresses, so we were a part of a large group! 

Titanic movie dress group photo!

Later, Rachel, Kat, and I went outside and Amanda kindly took some group photos of us.

So fancy! (From left: Kat, Rachel, me)

Wonder Woman pose is NOT historically accurate, or flattering, apparently...

Call me, Lady Megan

RBF

Lady Stelzer and Lady Edson

Do try to be serious, ladies

Nope.

After the party we hung out in the bar, had some champagne, and giggled as the muggles oogled us from afar.

Saturday:

GALA DAY. I was in full panic mode upon waking up. My dressed was hemmed, but still not trimmed. It needed trim to be finished. Rachel and I went to a class in the morning on 18th century hair, which proved to be immensely useful!! Then we got to work trimming my dress. Rachel, Amanda, and I hunkered down in my room and got shit done. Amanda sewed buttons while Rachel and I cut, pinked, and ruffled strips of silk for the trim. At that point I had to leave for another limited class, but I took my dress and trimmings with me, intent on finishing it come hell or high water. I didn't get much sewing done in class, but I did finish my class project (a Downton Abbey inspired necklace and earrings). I blazed through making it it though and left class an hour and a half early so I could sew my trim. I was feverishly sewing clear through the red carpet, and right up until 7:30. They were getting ready to serve dinner as I finally finished my trim, and got dressed. I was surprised that I managed a decent 18th century hairstyle and getting dressed in less than 30 minutes. I made it downstairs in time for the salad course. I honestly never would have gotten it done if it wasn't for the help I received from Rachel and Amanda, they rock!

The dinner was just ok, but the cheesecake they served for dessert was phenomenal. I spent a lot of the meal though watching the servers like a hawk. Every single time a server leaned over to place/remove something from the table my heart was in my throat worried for my silk dress. I think everyone felt that way. My roommate kept having to dance away from a server with strawberry jam on her sleeve who kept getting too close. One server dropped a whole plate of food behind a table of women who all looked too scared to look behind them and see if their trains/skirts were ruined (thankfully I think it missed). I heard a rumor later that night that one server did spill something on someone's dress and there was a whole to-do about it. When you put that much time, energy, and expense into something like that it's easy to see why we get over protective. After dinner they started off the dancing by doing the Time Warp. It was amazing! I had to try and explain to my German roommate what the Time Warp was, but I don't think it's self explanatory, she'll just have to watch the movie. 

WE DANCED SO MUCH. I am going to have to give my a dress a good spray down with vodka to keep it from getting funky because there was much dancing, and that room was pretty warm. But it was a blast!

3 beautiful ladies all dolled up for the Gala

Not bad for 30 minutes

This cheesecake was to DIE for

Decent mirror shot

I was so happy with my silk flower bow with feathers I made. It covered the crappy parts of my hairstyle. And thumbs up for $14 earrings from Amazon

Oh no! Marie Antoinette got put in the stocks!

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Those trains though!

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Kat selfie!

Gala aftermath in my room.

Sunday:

Waking up after Gala night was...rough. I wanted to make it to the Royal Breakfast though, and I was the only one. Rachel had a raging headache and Amanda had a class, so I went alone. I got lots of compliments on my 1930s house robe that I wore, but didn't get a picture in. Oh well! I felt like I could relax a lot more on Sunday because I wasn't rushing to finish anything. Most of the day was spent hanging out in the lobby just chatting with people. Over the course of the weekend I met a lot of awesome people and it was nice to just chat and figure out what we had in common. I attended my last limited class on Soutache trim, and then met up with Rachel and Amanda for dinner and our last hurrah. We got lost a bit trying to find the Maggianos that was hidden on the back side of an empty mall, but we found it and stuffed our faces. When we came back to the hotel we had drinks in the bar and were invited to sit with a group of ladies. We had a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and just got to enjoy each others company. I had way too many glasses of champagne that night, and woke up feeling like shit, but hey it was our last night. NO RAGERTS!

Monday:

While many CoCo attendees checked out and left on Sunday afternoon/evening we chose to stay an extra day. We decided to get up early and check out the fashion district downtown before heading to the airport. I think I would have enjoyed it more had the weather not been so miserable, and had I not had a hangover. I didn't buy anything, unfortunately, and we ended up leaving early because we were hot, hungry, and miserable. Rachel and I got to the airport a solid 3 hours before our flights so we checked in, got through security and found a place to eat. It was kind of nice just to relax, have a bite, and wait. We were exhausted. A long weekend of late nights and early mornings, and a lot of go-go-go. The last 30 minutes or so we hardly talked, mainly because we were both too tired. Rachel sat with me at my gate since my plane was leaving first, and then when my plane started to board she made her way to her own gate. It was sad saying goodbye. I had a really great weekend hanging out with her, Amanda, and all the other wonderful people I met. And it was a little bit a fairytale getting to dress up in fancy dresses, drink champagne, and have parties, so the prospect of coming back to the real world was sobering. The rest is pretty uneventful travel back home, with the exception of the medical emergency on the plane on the way home that (thankfully) did not result in an emergency landing. The guy ended up walking off the plane. 

Moral of the story: Don't deep sea dive and then get on a plane.

Overall thoughts:

Would I go back? Maybe. Someday? I don't think I'll be in a big hurry to attend again. While the parties are fun, I didn't feel like I got a whole lot out of the classes (limited classes excluded). And a trip like that is pretty costly, so probably not something that will happen yearly. We'll see though, I'm not totally opposed to going again.

However, I did meet a lot of amazing people. Yes, there were some not so amazing people there too, but the good outshone the bad. I have a whole host of new friend requests sent and received from the weekend and I feel like I found my tribe. That's important when you have a niched hobby like historical costuming. I think that CoCo overall proved to me that I am good enough to display my work, and wear it proudly. There's a lot of self doubt that happens going into attending CoCo, but when someone wearing an absolutely amazing gown they've sewn themselves tells you how beautiful and well made your gown is, it's a confidence booster.

Sooooo close!

Wow, it's been a while hasn't it? Whoops. I've been busy. Sewing, working, and traveling. BUT, the good news is that I am so close to finishing one of dresses. Which is great news because it means I might actually have something finished to actually wear at Costume College. So much for deadlines.

For the sake of posting here are some updates on the construction of my 19teens evening gown.

The bodice is from Simplicity 1517, and the rest of the dress is Laughing Moon #104

Front view 

After sewing hook and eye tape to the bodice, I tried it on. The good news: it fits! I think I could have gone a little lower on the bust line, it's a little over modest for my tastes, but frankly I'm running out of time so it'll have to do for now.

Back view

The back view showed some issues with gaping in the back. I think it's due to the overlap I added over the hooks and eyes not laying flat. Since it sits up you can see the hooks/eyes.

When closed on the table or mannequin the overlapped edges meet fine, but as you can see in the first photo there's quite a bit of loose area covering. I think that stitching it down to the tape a little more will help hold it in place and lessen gaping. If I'm wrong only the top 3" will show and I'll figure out something creative.

Under bodice and main skirt fabric pinned together.

Whole unhemmed enchilada pinned to the dressform.

Now I'm in the process of hemming the main skirt to the proper length, and slip stitching (*groan*) the hem facing to the interlining. Once that's done I get to stitch the sleeves, overskirt and belt to the underbodice and it'll be done!

If I have time I might embellish it a bit with some glass beads and more sequins (the over skirt is beaded and sequined along the bottom edge), but we'll see!

Pretty Underwear

I now have all the beautiful underwear I need for Costume College. If nothing else I will be wandering the halls in wonderful underwear.

BEWARE: PICTURE HEAVY POST TO FOLLOW

First off are my 18th C. Stays and shift. The stays are great, the shift...not so much. I'll have to see if I can fix the shift or if it has to be remade altogether, so we'll see, but for now it's functional. The stays are made from two layers of cotton twill, hand dyed by me, lined with linen, and bound with chamois leather. The eyelets are hand sewn with a decorative stitch that took wayyyyyy longer than necessary.

18th C. Stays - Exterior View Laid Flat

18th C. Stays - Interior View Laid Flat

18th C. Stays - Close Up Exterior- Eyelets, Binding

18th C. Stays - Close Up Interior - Lining, Tabs, Binding

18th C. Stays - Back fit

18th C. Stays - Front Fit

Next up...Edwardian Teens Undergarments

The combinations are a self drafted pattern, and made from cotton. They button up the front and had decorative pin tucks on the shirt front. The lace inserts at the waist and top edge are threaded with ribbon so they can be tightened. They aren't perfect, but they are underwear, so hopefully no one will be looking at them too closely. Unless, of course, I don't finish the dress and end up having to walk around Costume College in only my Edwardian skivvys. 

Edwardian Combination Underwear

The corset...Well I couldn't have asked for a better turnout. It's made of a single layer of cotton twill and bound with satin bias binding.I added some machine embroidery along the bottom edge for decoration and hand stitched flossing at the ends of each bone both top and bottom. The top flossing is hidden by the decorative lace, but it serves its purpose adding a bit of strength to the boning channel ends.

Edwardian Teens Corset - Front View

Edwardian Teens Corset - Close Up - Top Edge Lace, Binding

Edwardian Teens Corset - Close Up - Flossing, Embroidery, Binding

Edwardian teens Corset - Rear View

Pardon the back view of the corset. My dress form does not like being corseted.

I have a problem...

This problem happens with literally every blog I have ever started, and I'm sorry to those of you following me because I am terrible. I think I've made four posts on this blog this year, and I've got to tell you....I have 5 half written posts sitting in my drafts. FIVE. And they aren't like, half baked idea posts, they are mostly written thought out posts. They are just missing pictures or something extra I felt was necessary.

In sewing news I'm still a slacker, but trying to get better. I completed my mock up for my teens corset and figured out its issues. I cut out the size indicated on the pattern for my measurements, but decided in the end to cut out a size smaller to fix some of the gap issues in the lacing. I got some wonderful advice from the pattern designer on the placement of my bones, which was off because apparently I don't know how to read a pattern. I used the handy dandy eyelet hole feature on my sewing machine for the lacing eyelets on my mock up, but I have grommets for the real thing. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they actually work and don't get all wonky when I try to install them on the actual corset. If anyone has any tips for setting grommets, please comment and let me know. I need all the help I can get.

Last night I cut the pattern out of my actual corset fabric and began pinning it together. Here's hoping I can finish the whole corset this weekend and begin work on the dress.

My deadline for the teens dress is still April 14th, so we'll see if I can hold to it. If I can finish the corset this weekend that will give me just under 2 weeks to finish the dress. It's a crunch, for sure, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm both excited and terrified to sew the actual dress. I definitely want to see my sketch come to life, but I read through the pattern instructions and...gulp. I'll have to do a little bit of altering to the pattern because I'm making the under bodice strapless, so we'll see how that goes. I'll try to keep you posted!

Slacker

I've literally gotten nothing done in the last week and I'm freaking out a little bit. I'm way behind on the goals I set for myself. I had a goal to be finished with my Outlander dress by the end of February and it's March 5th and I haven't even started the redraw of the bodice pieces let alone cut out a mock up.

My next deadline is to have my teens dress finished by the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. So that gives me roughly no time to sew the corset AND the dress.

Not to mention I've added another project to my pile of projects, because I needed another creative project like I need a hole in the head.

This past week my husband and I bought a vintage pop up camper that we plan to renovate. Meet our 1977 Apache Ranger hardsided pop up camper:

At least it's vintage, right?

Guys, it's so 70s inside it hurts. Like, who decided the en vogue colors for the 1970s were brown, baby shit yellow, the ugliest shade of green I've ever seen in my life, and orange? A little known fact about me is that I pretty much hate brown. When I was little we moved from California to Colorado and rented a mobile home, in a trailer park, that I'm pretty sure was built in the 1970s because it was like living inside a giant turd. The carpet was brown, the walls were brown, I'm fairly certain the ceiling was brown. It was just a shrine to the color brown and it made me hate it. So the inside of this camper is going to get a total overhaul so I can hopefully remove much of the 70s influence.

Now, you might be thinking, "But Megan, you're all about vintage stuff! Isn't that why you sew old clothes and watch movies set in decades that you don't belong in?" Well, the short answer is yes. The long answer is that my love for vintage pretty much extends to the mid-late 50's at best. The 60s are not my thing, and neither are the 70s. As a child who was born in the last year of the 1980s I'm all about good 80s movies, but the fashion is meh and the design style is even worse (though not nearly as bad as the 70s). Maybe some day that will change, but for now I'll be modernizing my camper.

Maybe I'll include some updates as we renovate, in addition to trying to stick to at least a rough deadline for my CoCo projects.