Birthday Dress

Most years I make myself a New Year's Eve dress; mainly as a consolation and armour for having to go out on an evening that everyone is out and staying home feels like a worse idea than being out. This year's occasion is my 40th birthday, which seems to warrant a fancy dress more than NYE. I am not freaked out about my age, as most seem to assume when I tell them that I am about to turn 40. The last few years it isn't so much the number that freaks me out, but birthdays in general. Like holidays where there is too much pressure to have a great time, I don't like the attention.

Forever, my way of dealing with not liking the attention is overdressing. It is what led me into dressmaking in the first place. I have never been able to blend in, so I decided trying to blend in is a waste of time. I always feel better when I am dressed in whatever it is I want to be wearing; be it a particular colour, an odd combination of eras, my fox fur collar... Whatever feels right to me. It isn't ever khaki pants or baggy T-shirts or cheap throw aways or brand logos or ill-fitting anything. This has led me to making the pieces that I could never find or never afford.

I will say upfront that this dress cost under $50. to make. It is nothing I would ever make for a client. There is a particular freedom in making something for ones self. I can fit at the drop of a hat without a schedule of waiting to get to the next step. I can not worry about the underpinnings being exactly perfectly straight. I can leave in my alterations that no one will ever see from the outside. I can forgo the extra hour(s) of finely looking over each piece to make sure there isn't one single Piper hair on the piece ever. I can experiment freely without worrying about wasting fabric or time or losing money. I don't have to answer to ANYONE.

The Inspiration

I wanted a very structured cocktail dress with a substantial skirt, but huge knocking over tables skirt. I turned to my Dior book for inspiration. Half circle will do nicely. I debated over strapless or strappy or almost cap; which won, because it is fall after all.

Six Yards of Hand Dyed Silk Duchesse

A few months back I found on super clearance a bolt of silk duchesse for $2. a yard. Silk duchesse normally retails for between $40. - $60. a yard. This was just too good to pass up. It had bits of tape on it, but I didn't care, it could be dyed. 2 boxes of Rit dye later it was a lovely aquamarine blue. The only issue is that there were some uneven spots and tiny stains. Not a big deal, I knew this dress would need surface decoration anyway. I like asymmetry, so why not let the fabric be the guide?

Here is the motif. I used this over a decade ago on a wedding dress. Pale gold 3-cut aurora borealis finished glass beads I've had in my stash forever, and aurora borealis Swarovski crystals also out of my stash. Strangely I rarely use this colour for flowers, but I had a whole jar of them.

Construction

This fabric has some drape; it is normally a little stiffer, but the sizing went out of it from washing and dying. No matter. I underlined the bodice with permanent press muslin (a mix of poly/cotton) which is stiffer than cotton muslin, and the skirt has an additional layer of stiff tulle and 3" horsehair braid around the hem to give it a solid shape.

I carefully went over the whole dress and pinned every spot and stain (all of them very tiny) and began sewing stars over each one. Here (see above) the skirt is attached, and the beading is just beginning.

The Underdress

At the same time I began making the underdress. I debated whether it would be a free standing piece or sewn into the dress. I fretted about this for days before starting it. Not that it matters as long as the dress has the desired shape on the outside, but what would any project be if I didn't spend copious amounts of time fretting over the logistics of its construction? In the end it was a free standing piece. Gently corseted with 10 yards of tulle fuller in the back to match the skirt (that I was adamant that it DIDN'T peek out from the hem), 6 steel bones (went in for light structure), waist tape and hook & eye tape closure. It gives a nice smooth line to the dress, and proper fullness to the skirt without completely taking away all of the drape. And I rustle when I walk.


The dress is almost done, save for a few more stars to add the skirt. The New Year's Eve party is tomorrow. I will be spending the evening at the bar down the street totally overdressed sipping cocktails with friends on the last night of my thirties.

as long as i am sewing

It has been forever since I have written, but don't think I haven't thought about it. It gets harder and harder as the last post glides slowly into the past, and the guilt becomes more overwhelming. I make promises to myself that I will start, and post regularly, and plan ahead, and take photos.. I am very good on twitter, instagram, and even practicing my french every day at duolingo, but totally bad here. I am sure I have said it all before whenever I come back in a manic burst after a long hiatus, post here a few times and disappear again.

I have spent most of the summer catching up on old commissions that have been languishing, knitting, trying desperately to get my house in order, and on my corsetry project. This summer I have been trying to clear my slate so that I am free to do whatever; which might seem counter intuitive to being laser focused. The realisation I came to when doing these things is it doesn't so much matter what I am doing as long as I am sewing. I have done a wide variety of projects which I may or may not post, but right now I am looking towards fall.

Fall will bring me to my 40th birthday, and while I am not much for planning for my birthday save for making dinner reservations a couple of days before, this year (yesterday, actually) I decided that I need a new dress. Usually, I make myself a new dress for New Year's Eve, but a birthday is a real new year, and I need a dress. I haven't decided what exactly, except that it will be cocktail fancy, heavily underpinned, and possibly have some handwork on it. So starting now is a very good idea; especially since I still have to make a zillion flowers and corsets before holiday.

If you want to know what really excites me, it is underpinnings. These two images are examples of couture underpinnings that create the structure of a dress. The first one is Dior from this month's Vogue magazine and is a part of the dress. The second is 1957 Jaques Fath from my V&A Underwear Fashion in Detail book and is free standing, but likely made to go under a specific dress. Both are open on my bed for today's inspiration.

True couture. I love it. It is difficult, picky, and slightly imperfect underneath to give the appearance of perfection on the outside in the exact shape the designer intended. It takes almost forever like everything I feel is worth doing.

and on to the next thing

If you have been following my Twitter feed lately or have visited me at Crafty Wonderland or talked to me in person recently, it is no secret that I am working on an exciting new project: CORSETS. And you may say to me, but Kirsten, you have already been making corsets for years. True, true, but these are different. These are steel boned traditional waist reducing corsets. Each has three layers of fabric, spring and spiral steel boning, and tons of handwork. My great-grandmother Bachan taught me how to sew when I was three. She hand basted everything with a needle and thread, and I thought that was totally crazy and unnecessary. But these are all hand basted; they have to be for the pieces to match up perfectly.

The lovely absinthe green and black lace corset pictured above is my first of hopefully many. I am learning about how they fit, and techniques that will save me from tearing up my fingers like I did on this first one. I used an altered commercial pattern on this first one, and I have already designed a new on from scratch (in muslin form below). I hand sewed the lace on and hand flossed the boning in the traditional manner. I am not sure that I am interested in historically accurate in looks, but I do use all the traditional techniques (as I always have with everything else I make). I have been thoroughly obsessed, and researched this topic way too much in the last six months. There is something really satisfying about hand finishing a garment.



Why this, why now? When I started my business 13 years ago, I was making really crazy labour intensive pieces couture style. All cut to fit and hand finished with excruciating detail. I need to be challenged. I need to make my own designs that dance around my brain whether I have time to attempt them or not. This what makes me happiest. In the last several years, I have been relegated to accessories and taking on whatever project that offered me enough money to survive. I had so many ideas that never got to be made, or are sitting half finished in boxes or languishing in sketch books or invading my dreams. The dreams haunted me with the designs I longed to make instead of wiling away the hours avoiding the things that I had to make on deadlines that had me pushed up until the last minute..

So here I am. There will be a trunk show in the fall, date(s) and place(s) TBA. In the mean time, I am looking to try this lovely muslin on as many bodies as possible. If you are in Portland and have a waist 27-32 i would love to try this lovely muslin on you. I will be grading the pattern to fit other sizes, but I have to start somewhere, so if you are outside this range, I may need to try a later muslin when I get to that point. I am slow. Slow because all the things that I feel are worth doing take time. Slow because I still have to fill orders and take the occasional odd project to keep going. Interested? Send me a message.