There are no strings on me... but cats and chocolate

There was once three young ladies, willing to stroll in bustle in Le Louvre. Unbeknownst to them, the stars were looking kindly at this project and they were spare the rain. Saint Patrick's day inspire them, without them being aware of it till the meeting:
One was green like dark pines in a Tolkien forest,
The second was green like summer moss vivified by springwater,
The third was green like a creamy almond cake.

Each of them was peculiar:
One was stuffed in clear silk and velvet, slutty even in her inexistant pantalettes ; but the dead bird on her hat was protecting her from disregard.
The second was in a hurry : hatless, coatless, but her dress was so perfect she was stirring amazement
The third was perfect, from the tip of the flower on the top of her hat to the tip of her shoes, but her bustle was swinging and swirling behind her, as if a mischievous fairy was hidden inside it.

The crowd look at hem in awe:
The man asked: "Which french region are you ?"
And the hatless said : "We are the world !"
The woman asked : "Why are you doing this for ?"
And the slutty said : "For pleasure !!"
The kid asked : "Is it Sunday clothes ?"
And the fairy bustled said : "It's everyday clothing. Or it should be !!"

Only one dare call them freak, but don't freak need to dress up to look ladylike ?

The end

There's some artistic license, but 95% of it is true, and I forget to talk about Starbuck !

The rest of my pictures is here. Not in the order they were taken.

Thank you all for the nice comments on my bustle dress :) You're all great and sweet !

One precision, because someone mentionned it : the velvet of the bodice is not black but of a very dark green. But oh well!, the original idea was to make it out of black velvet, so I think it's all for the best, uh ?

Now I have picture of the hat and the dolman, but it doesn't really show the dolman correctly : so orange ! (or maybe it's my comp...)
As for the bird, it's an original vintage 19th century piece my mother found on a flea market.

( The hat )

( The dolman )

I realise that in more than 2 years I've been working on that dress, I have never given any proof that it was real. Well now it's finished ! (except that I must redo the skirt lining hem...)Pardon the pictures bad quality : something must be wrong with my digicam.



( The dress ! )

This is what I really hate with me : I am a so slooooooow seamstress. I wish I could have finished the bustle dress in time, but I just had to undo half the skirt because of a mistake, and my bodice, which fit and din't wrinkle as a toile, definitively does not want to be nice to me.

The costumed event is postponed. Which, I think, could be nice to green_martha too, for rushing to sew is never a good thing.

Let's see the positive point, now : my mother suggest, some time ago, that my Xmas gift this year was expensive : this could mean digital camera ! If so, I could post pictures of the finished bustle dress rather quickly !

Box-pleating is a method weirdly placed between pain and fun. To resume, I would point how fascinating it is to watch oneself sweat blood and water to press correct mathematical idiot box-pleats. Speaking of someone allergic to anything related to numbers, it's surrealist. I count : it needs 30 minutes to make two good box-pleats. A least, I making large ones.

This pleats are for the underskirt by the way : my insipration is this KCI dress. It's maybe not obvious (nothing is obvious with moire), but I think the underskirt has large box-pleats.

Foundation is cut and half sewn. The last seams are to be made with the silk taffetas parts. The apron of the skirt is half sewn. And the good news is that my taffetas is of middle quality. Having bought silk taffetas on sale, I was afraid to have real bad quality silk, but it could have been worse. It could also have been a lot better !! The problem being that the color is very clear, an almond green, and the defects are then more obvious. Anyway. It's silk. Shut up. Enjoy. You're not going to be able to have cheap silk for a long time now.


More randomn, I realise I have made plans too have a green dress for every period. I mean, I love green, it is not a secret, but will looking trough my books, I realise I have mentally mark absolutly all the green gowns with a "I'm going to make something similar". Nearly one dress, or costume, for each period. The only period for wich I just can't see dress in green is Regency. It just dont work for me. But pine forest green redingote like the one in the movie Monsieur N ? Mmmh yummy !

I'm a little bit fed up of my 1820s dress for the moment, so I want to begin a new project.

Of course, the blue regency dressed planned and begun one year ago does not fit. I should have guess... So the blue regency project is reported. But it's not really a bad thing, because I need that new costume for when green_martha come around the end of december. Considering how hot the clime is today, I think I will not be wrong when I say we will have on of the coldest winter of the last decade : so, regency dress ? hugh...

We're planning to go dressed up in Paris, in a museum or something and take picture (Costumed events for the poors and the desperate :) ), so I need a walking dress. My 1820s dress doesn't have a train (of course), and I love it, but there's no way I'm going out in a dress that make me look like I'm 100 kg fat. No way. So I was thinking of a 1880s dress.

I had several ideas, and since I recieve a pretty some for my b-day (even if the half of that gift money is going to pay the groceries...), I'm thinking of indulging myself silk fabrics and good velvets. Tel me which one has your preference :

- I will reproduce that dress : I just so LOVE it, it's painful. Construction is rather simple, the decorations make the difference. I also love the colors (golden brown, with contrasting red), but I think I will not find the fabrics, so I case I don't I'm thinking of a combination of deep blue for the dress and powder blue or very pale lavender for the contrast.

- I will do a two pieces like koshka_the_cat one : a black velvet bodice and a green silk skirt, or deep green velvet bodice and a [I still don't have the colour I could use] silk skirt. For the bodice, Katherine's one is great, but I don't want tabs, and I'd rather have a long tail. Maybe I will use it as a base. For the skirt, I want it to be puffy in the back, either, like the Janet Arnold's 1874 afternoon dress that Katherine and Démodé's Kendra used, or a more simple one (but still oh-my-goodness one)like this one.

- The third one is maybe the most difficut to make. It is rather similar to eldawen345 cupcake dress, but I want it done in this kind of colors (deep blue and white), with the same ladder of bows in the front (*hint hint* you can see a recurrent pattern here, between this dress and the first yellow and red one). The pattern for that dress is in PoF.

As for the underpinning, as always, I still dont have anything : I'm going to make the hunnissett corset made by eldawen in deep blue. I used to thing that it was a rather too simple corset, but after seeing hers, I find it pretty, and simplicity is what I need for a fast project.
For the bustle, I want a "queue d'écrevisse". I'm going to make it striped like jenthompson's one : I have a pin striped blue and white cotton fabric reserved to do a civil war corset, but I think there is enough in it for a small bustle. Because I'm going to make it a lot less proeminent : the "queue d'écrevisse" was fisrt used for natural form dresses.


So, any advice ?