This is my first fantasy project in about 2 years. I used to have a lot of ideas for fantasy gowns (and still have 1 that I'm tempted to make), but then I found historical costuming and it took over. The first thing I ever made was arguably historic but made with modern fabrics, despite the fact I've labelled it as fantasy. So I suppose the only fantasy gown I've ever made that is not based on a historic pattern is the Baldoch dress, which I used as a starting exercise for drafting my own patterns from scratch. It's about time for a new one then.
I don't know about the rest of the historic costuming community but sometimes I feel quite restricted by fabric choices and historic garments. It's either expensive silk, expensive linen, or hard to find suitable cotton. I have started going down using polyester instead of silk, with varying results. It's not just the up-turned noses of some members of the HA crowd that forces a lot of us to use natural fibres, but also that natural fibres to breathe a lot better than man-made, which is better for all of those events in the summer. Regardless of reason it's still a bit restricting.
Which is why fantasy gowns are so good. There are no limits on fabric, trim, or anything like that, because let's face it, it's unlikely you'll be wearing a fantasy gown to that Georgian house visit. You're not going to be wearing these gowns for long enough to start regretting it (in theory).
To be fair I kind of negated all of the above because I didn't design this dress, someone else did. This is my first real attempt at trying to faithfully-ish recreate something. I've written a post about my breakdown of Gwen's red gown from Merlin, but don't expect anything professional...
This project had so much potential, but was really difficult to complete. Most are design flaws, but others are just velvet being velvet and making everyone's like harder. I bought the materials to make a belt as I couldn't find one that matched what I had in my head. Terrible idea. During the shoot the belt just disintegrated because the jump rings used to connect all the metal discs wouldn't close properly. Stupidly, I didn't take my toolkit with me, thinking that I'd been careful during many repairs beforehand. That's why you see different versions of the belt in the photos....
I invested in a pair of extensions knowing I'd use them again, but I didn't do that great of a job blending them with my own hair. Given, my hair is purple right now, and I intentionally bought brown extensions because I more often keep my hair natural as dye it. I should've curled my hair, but it would only have negated some of the issue....I actually tried to use a small feather barette to keep the loose hairs hidden, but as you'll see this didn't really work that well.
The place I chose as Camelot was a lovely ruin called Haughmond Abbey in Shropshire. It's close-ish to where I live and just seemed perfect for that medieval feel I wanted. I had the week off from work, and typically the British weather decided it was going to rain for the majority of the time. This was really the only time I had to take photos of this gown so I had to just make the best of it. Thankfully it wasn't raining for the few hours I was there, but the grass was soaking. My shoes, laced up pumps, got completely drenched, and I practically had to ring out the hem of the gown at the end. The inevitable dirt was also there. I'm hoping the velvet will be forgiving and all it'll need is a good brush down when it's dry. I was at Haughmond for.so.long...almost 2 hours, and I still don't feel like I quite got the shots I wanted. But more people began to arrive, and my belt decided it was going to completely disintegrate at around the 2 hour mark so I just decided to leave it there. I got comparison shots with Angel Coulby's poses so that'll just have to satiate the perfectionist in me.
And let's compare...
And, of course, it wouldn't be my costuming blog if I didn't add in this one...
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| My shoe lacing had come undone for the 3rd time... |
The making of....
I could've chosen red velvet, but I kind of didn't want to try my best to make an exact replica because mine would never measure up. Might as well change it. Red is lovely, but midnight blue is also nice, and to be honest goes with my fair complexion and blue eyes better. I think I ordered about 10m of velvet (I know, a friggin ton). It still wasn't enough, so all in all I think I used, or at least bought, 12 metres of fabric for this project.
I'm not great at mock-ups, as regular readers will know. Instead of drafting a pattern, I altered one I already had. Angel (the actress playing Gwen) is definitely wearing some kind of corset underneath (or a corset built into the dress itself) and I planned to do the same. So I used my natural form era bodice pattern and altered the front. The red dress has princess seams whereas my pattern has darts at the front (which is HA, obvs), so I changed that. I already knew it fit so the mocking up would be minimal.
I didn't take any pictures of the first mock-up. It was good enough, but I hadn't patterned the skirt so wasn't sure how wide the panels needed to be. The velvet, although not really expensive, had made a bit of a dent on my bank balance because I'd ordered so much of it. I couldn't just make a full pattern and cut straight into the velvet for its first use. The skirt needed tested.
Gwen's dress has 2 gores at the front and I think at the back, but I'm not a big fan of gores. As a compromise I only added them to the side front seams and made the rest of the panels skirted (is that the term?). They were friggin huge. I also wanted a train at the back, so the amount of fabric needed for this project was sky rocketing.
For those of you who have worked with velvet before (any kind really), you'll probably be filled with dread, as I was. I've only worked with velvet for a bodice or two, and it was quite bad the last time. Now I was doing entire dress panels worth. Velvet is an absolute swine to work with. The problems start from as soon as you cut into the damn stuff. I even bought an even-feed foot for the machine that's how many problems I was anticipating, and it was money very well spent. Anyway, micro velvet (polyester) is lovely and shiny, and drapes really nicely. The thing is that I didn't really want it to drape, I wanted some structure. To also mitigate the slipperiness of the velvet I decided I was going to flatline it with cotton. I also thought it would be a good idea to make the cotton a mock-up, so all I would need to do is pick apart the mock-up and use it as the final pattern piece.
It went together no problem. I did have to piece for the first time. As I mentioned, the skirt panels are larger than most fabric. I did cut a few of them down, but I really liked the large skirt! I made the mistake of not using the even-feed foot when I was piecing together the panels and it slid all over the place. Not too bad since we were just talking about the corners of the very full skirt panels.
I also did something a bit stupid with the CB panels. Because they look very similar to the CF, I acidentally cut 6" from the length, then afterwards realised it was the CB and was supposed to be really long. Fortunately, this didn't happen with the velvet so the problem was minor.
As you can see from the mock-up there are 2 things that need altering. I didn't know how far up to insert the gores. so one side is just at the waist (although ended up being slightly above), and the next is just at the hip (where I think the ones in the original start). I'm not the gorgeous Angel Coulby, I don't have a figure like hers, even with the corset underneath, and so I wasn't sure if the placement of the gores would be as flattering on me as it was on her. I did find the one inserted near the waist made the entire dress loose it's shape a wee bit, considering the panels themselves were shaped. I surprisingly preferred the hip gores.
The second issue is obviously the back closure. I hadn't put in eyelets to this mock-up because this was only the interlining. What the picture is showing is that the gown may actually be too big for me at the hips and waist. I think it just met in the middle at the bust area. I barely managed to pin the back together for a fitting. Obviously too big is a lot better than too small, so I decided that I would use the pattern as it was, and then alter the fit once the velvet was attached to the cotton. This meant I could insert the eyelet closure and then alter the seams from there.
Then began the laborious task of cutting out all of the velvet panels and attaching them to the cotton. Because I detest wrinkles the only method I've ever found works to prevent them is by hand-basting layers together. This takes a while on a bodice, it took even longer on this gown. But slowly it began to come together.
I don't know if anyone else finds this problem, but some of my cotton panels weren't the same size as the velvet ones, despite the fact I'd used them to cut out the velvet. Some trimming was involved, but thankfully only on the skirt panels rather than the bodice. I think it may be because the velvet slipped as I was cutting it, but who knows...
As I've mentioned in another post I'm on my own in this hobby, so all of my creations need to have a closure that I can do unaided. My logic with this was that I could make the closure like a corset one in that I could slip it on over my head and then tighten it at the back until it fit.
For the bertha I was all set to whip out the embroidery needles and sew until my fingers bled and soul died. Then I watched a video from someone else who had attemtped this project. She used gold vine trim she found on the interwebs, and then I thought, surely there's something I can find as well? I don't mind a bit of embroidery, but if I could find something that was less time consuming to do then I was taking it.
After a few searches I finally found something that I thought would do the trick, along with some bonus items.
Then it was time to stop procrastinating and get on with fitting the dress. As I'd expected from the mock-up it was a bit big in places, so I ended up having to take 1/2" away from the SF seams and SB seams.
Don't worry, the white cotton cord belt is only temporary. You can also see my first mistake. The gores are uneven, I think they're off by about 3/4" possibly more, but at this stage I wasn't sure if I was going to fix it.
The next thing was to pattern the bertha/collar, not sure what the kids are calling it. This was easy, although I ended up having a lot of excess. Better that than not enough. Then it was the ordeal of trimming the damn thing. Rather than hand embroidery, which I wouldn't have finished for 60 years, I opted for bought trim. I found some silver vines from China, and when they arrived proceeded to hack them to pieces.
I laid them all out, with both back and front, and then attached them....by hand......ugh. I don't know how long this took, possibly not as long as it felt.
The Bertha is 2 layers of this awful stiff waxed/glazed cotton I bought by intentional mistake when I was doing my 1660s court gown. It was stiff enough to flatline the taffeta of that gown with and looked spot on. I wanted the Bertha to have some body, so this seemed like a good idea. I used 2 layers because that seemed to be better than just the one. I then cut the velvet with seam allowance and folded the bottom under and stitched by hand.
I left the seam allowance from the top free so I could attach it to the dress. I actually finished the neckline of the dress with bias binding made from the blue cotton I used for the interlining. With velvet I thought it best to have as many raw edges covered as possible. I ended up attaching the bertha by hand as well as I thought it's give me more control.
It was during this fitting that I noticed the back was buckling where the lacing was. I had already put a boning channel in, but after putting flat steel bones and finding it made the dress not fit as nice decided against it. However, when I noticed the pulling I knew I had to find something. This left either spiral steel, or plastic whalebone. So I tried both to see which was better. Both had the flexibilte that the flat steel lacked, but I ended up choosing spiral steel for that bit of extra strength.
Then it was onto the dreaded sleeves. I think these were the part of the project that caused the most thought and problem solving. I just couldn't settle on a pattern, and I even did miniatures on paper.
Thankfully I could do a mock-up of sorts. I decided I was going to line the sleeves with this gorgeous paisley poly satin I used as a lining for my 1950s winter coat. I seemed to have a lot of it floating around, like...a lot. I thought it would provide a nice contrast to the darkness of the velvet as well.
I had it in two colours, red and blue. Blue was obviously the final fabric, and the red has been kicking around my sewing room for 5 years (I know!), so it was time to put it to some use.
I think I did about 2 mock-ups before cutting out the blue lining piece, and then checking that before I finally cut into the velvet. I changed the shape of the sleeve because I thought it was closer to the original, but turns out I was wrong. They're also not as long as the original, but I drew the line at buying more fabric just to fix it.
I almost had to actually because I f**cked up with cutting the velvet. Because the sleeve was so long and difficult to get symmetrical, it was easier to only pattern half of it and then flip it over on the centre line. Well, some idiot (me) forgot this and cut down the centre line instead.
I had two options. Make a seam there, which I didn't want to do because the original didn't have one. Or try and get the sleeve on the remaining length of fabric and piece together the difference. I went with the second option. The fabric is so fluffy and dark that you can't see any of the mistakes I made.
Then it was onto the underlseeves. My original plan was to have these as full length sleeves that attached to the over-sleeves with some kind of tacking stitch that would be invisible under the bertha. Then I watched Alicia Estelle's video on her own repro of Gwen's dress and saw that she used false undersleeves. This would be a lot easier than patterning and fitting an entire sleeve.
I'm not sure I love this idea. Since my fabric doesn't have any stretch I had to put a drawstring at the top of the arm, but even then the sleeve falls down. I'm toying with the idea of ribbons to attach it to the undersleeve.
The decoration took ages, but that's because I constructed the undersleeves before adding the trim. I should've added the trim before stitching...duh!
I really love the contrasting lining though, just not really the cut of the sleeves, but it could've been worse....so much worse.
Then was onto the hem. I took zero pics of this process, but let me assure you it was a looooonnnnnggg one. I finally managed to find out that Angel Coulby wore some kind of stiffened, quilted petticoat underneath the original as opposed to the crinloine I had thought initially. Still not wanting to do that I instead decided to face the hem. I had some leftover crin tape from my 1890s gown, but only enough to do the front quarter. So I had to use bias strips from the leftover cotton I had from my pocket hoops petticoat.
Attaching one edge ws by machine, but I had to finish it by hand. My God, I swear it never ended, it just kept going.......jk, it did end eventually, but took me hours. Then, it was finished.
I still have something going on with the sleeves. They're pulling the neckline down and puckering the Bertha for some reason, but at least it's the same on both sides. Alterantively this is bad because if it only happened on the side that's a bit tight at least I'd know how to fix it. Hopefully it isn't too noticeable.
That's just an interim belt I used, I actually made one from silver filigree squares, attached with small jump loops, which annoyingly, practically disintegrated on the day of the photoshoot. Not a clue why the jump loops refused to meet, or why the filigree squares always seemed to find a way to wriggle their way out.
There are a lot of problems with this gown, ones that I didn't really notice until the photoshoot. One is that the bertha keeps folding up at the shoulders. I predict this is due to the way I attached it, and possible the shape of the armscyes. The other is that it's uneven on where it sits on my shoulders, and this is definitely because one arm scye is tighter than the other.
The final one is the undersleeves. They were soooooo irritating on the day I took the photos. Every 3 seconds i was having to pull them up. Maybe one day I'll remove the drawstring, add a random scrap of fabric and just attach them them fully to the gown. The only issue with this, and one fo the reasons i opted for removable sleeves, was I need range of motion to fasten the gown myself, which might be impeded by tight sleeves. Or I could just replace the ribbon string with elastic....
One minor niggle, which I mayy have mention, is that the sleeves aren't long enough, or the right shape, but I think if they'd been any longer/heavier I would've had many more issues with the neckline.
All in all, I think I set my standards too high for this project and just expected right off the bat to be able to work miracles with velvet and my own sewing knowledge. To be honest, it's not a bad replica, and the gown itself, the main body, it practically constructed exactly like the original, so I won there. And let's end on a positive.
