By the pricking of my thumbs, something blingy this way comes.
I've done a bit more work on my Folkwear Monte Carlo dress, adding a little more beading to the shoulder area, making the matching tunic with tassels (and hand beading a bit of sparkle into said tassels) and finally making a very darkly glittering bandeau using both the dress and tunic materials.
There hasn't been much on telly this week so I've been sitting after dinner with bowls of beads and cursing the lousy energy saver lightbulbs we have throughout the house.
The tunic was really easy to make; I used my overlocker (not traditional I know but it gave a nice edge to the garment) around the edges and sewed two of the three pieces together, stabilising it with a bit of jersey mesh I had left over from another top I'd made ages ago. Then I beaded the tassels and sewed them firmly on. They are heavy compared to the filigree texture of the fabric, a metallic lace. The tunic is supposed to cross over in front but when I tried that I looked like battleship full steam ahead. Curse these big boobs! It looks pretty good unfastened though.
My hand beaded tassels
Classic 20s pose!
Now for a look at the bit of extra beading I did around the shoulders - and this pic shows off the bandeau pretty well too! The extra shoulder beading is discreet - more beads scattered in between the three original rows, sort of like a little spray of beads, a light shower rather than a thunderstorm.
Shoulder beading and bandeau
That bandeau took about four hours to bead. It's not beaded all the way around; there's a section right in the middle, then scattered beads out to where I have three rows of beads hanging freely at the sides. This 'Facebook' shot probably shows it better:
Vampish Facebook profile pic - one day I will give Jimmy Durante his nose back
Speaking of Facebook, those of you who read this and know me on Facebook too may wonder why I don't publicise this blog on Facebook. This blog is more of a personal thought dump; me being me and occasionally saying things about myself I wouldn't say to most people I know. There is a certain cathartic pleasure in being a blogger and having a name not my own. Aside from which I've grumbled about a couple of people on here who are actually friends of mine and Facebook friends too. Don't want them to read this blog! Only a few people I know on FB know that I'm Carinthia too.
Anyway, I think I have finished my dress, the tunic and the bandeau. I have really enjoyed the beading process and was getting quite quick by the end of the bandeau, so will look for more items I can bling up within the bounds of good taste. Or make another 20s dress :-)
OK, I'm a nostalgia buff. I've often lamented here about the busyness of life these days and sighed over less frenetic times. I do have to pull myself up at some point and thank modern living for pain free dentistry etc and remember that the good old days are usually viewed through rose-coloured glasses and period tv shows which can't port into your living room the smell of living in an era sans deodorant.
That being said the 1920s is my nostalgia decade of choice. Women wore short skirts and short hair and had more control over their life (and finances) than their mothers did at the same age. It was an exciting time of jazz, aeroplanes, fast cars (that couldn't brake or handle but oh my those Bugattis were elegant!), cocktails and gorgeous dresses.
Even though I don't have the skinny bod for 20s fashions, I love them.
Six months ago I bought a dress pattern I'd been sighing over for ages - the Monte Carlo Dress, by Folkwear. It's a 1990s pattern based on a 1925 Poiret gown. With a skirt cut on the bias, it's a luxurious construction requiring around 5 metres of fabric. Given that I have been sewing barely a year, I quailed at the thought of making a mistake and buggering up those five metres. It's not like I would be making it in plain cotton; oh no, not this little black duck for whom ignorance can be bliss when it comes to working with fabric. Nope, I was going to do it in something gorgeous, something worthy of a 1920s woman out for a night on the razz at the best speakeasy in town.
In those six months I've made quite a lot of clothes, mostly tops, and a skirt suit, mainly out of knitted fabric. Understanding the directions on the pattern has become easier (except for Burda. Jeez. The translation from German into English is strictly double Deutsch. I'm sure they leave directions out just to confuse the English speakers. Revenge for WWII or something). I read through the Monte Carlo directions last week and they made a lot more sense than they did when I bought the pattern.
So I decided it was time to make the Monte Carlo dress last weekend. My local Sewright shop had the ideal fabric, a burnout velvet in deep midnight blue. I had some paler blue fabric I could use as lining for the bodice, even though the pattern doesn't call for a full lining. I decided the moderately sheer velvet needed lining to cover my knickers and provide some stability for the slightly stretchy velvet itself. I lashed out on metallic lace to make the cape thing that goes with the dress, but haven't made that yet. That's next weekend. It looks very simple.
To my delight making the dress was a breeze compared to some of the things I've over-ambitiously tried to make in the last year. The swear factor was zero.
My Monte Carlo dress
I've mentioned my ignorance and over-ambition, and put both of them to good use by doing some hand-beading on the front of the bodice. This had to be done before the garment was stitched together. Now, I've never beaded anything in my life, so I blithely went out to Lincraft and bought some bugle beads and seed beads and embroidery needles and set to it. Thankfully my slightly wavy, ever so slightly crooked lines of beads are disguised by the fabric, which is a bit wavy itself. You don't notice the lines aren't completely straight. Phew! I have found one little error I'll have to fix though and I'm not saying what it is :-)
I decided to do something really simple in the way of beading as you can add impatience to the list of my foibles as well and I desperately wanted to get my dress done over the weekend. I hate having to interrupt something I'm doing and put it aside for another week.
hand beading
I sewed all day Saturday. I sewed all day Sunday. By Sunday night the bodice was ready for the skirt, and I'd hemmed half the skirt. This morning I worked until 11 then thought, sod it! I HAD to finish this dress!! So I did. I took my time lining the skirt up with the bodice and tacked it all in place before sewing it with the machine. I did quite a bit of hand finishing here and there too.
The end result is pretty stunning, even if I say so myself. I'm astonished that I made it. It fits like a dream and my seams aren't too untidy on the inside :-).
I'll have to make a proper beaded bandeau to match it - I've tied a bit of fabric around my head here - and of course the cape thingy.
Without the bandeau and with different jewellery it's timeless enough to wear to a posh night out without feeling I'm wearing a costume - with my husband's new job I may get the opportunity to wear it out a few times! But with the 20s trimmings I'm all set for a 20s themed event when I hear of one that sounds like fun.
I couldn't wait to try it on once it was complete (how nice to try it on without pins digging into me!) and then decided on makeup and a photo or two. I'd told a friend about it and she wanted to see a piccy. All tarted up with the appropriate accessories, I felt like a different person - that same feeling I had at the Paragon cafe in February.
So here I am, 20s woman in my 20s bedroom, complete with cat and the lamp that cat broke. Cocktails, anyone?
Today I bought a copy of Grazia. This is worth mentioning because I rarely buy magazines with the exception of Country Living (British Edition) or Burda (sewing mag). If I want to read a gossip mag it'll be at the hairdresser's, but since I got a new car the hairdresser visits have got fewer and fewer. The colour I now buy in a box at Priceline and if I'm feeling very frugal and have split ends it's a DIY job for that too.
The last couple of weeks I've swayed from my usual diet of murder mysteries and have been reading some of Marian Keyes' chick lit novels (thanks to Displaced who put me onto them). Chick lit may be a rather unkind description in this case as her novels feature characters with deeper problems, mental illness and other issues; this sets these novels apart from the dime-a-dozen-with-pink-covers-and-curly-fonts books. Aside from which they are bloody funny. And Marian Keyes knows how to hold your attention; several nights in a row I've been up till midnight because of her blasted cliffhangers at the end of chapters.
Having read about women working in the fashion/beauty industry (Anyone Out There) I had a sudden urge to pick up a copy of Grazia, just for the heck of it. This was doubly fuelled by galloping through How To Be Impossibly French by Helena Frith Powell last night in a bubble bath.
I have a cup of tea on one side of the computer and Grazia on the other, and flicking quickly through the mag I realise that while I don't feel at least fifteen years too old and several kilos too heavy for it, I, in fact, am. I also don't have the budget to be a fahionista - or the longing, even if I was a lithe 25 again.
There was a time when I'd blow one third of my weekly pay packets on shoes and clothes (that bit about 25 relates to this!). This was the 80s and I followed fashion with a passion. Unfortunately! Of all the eras to choose...oh well.
These days I have my own style. I might pick and choose an idea of what's in style and try and recreate that with what I have in my wardrobe, some of which is vintage stuff I've bought from eBay, markets or op shops that comes in handy from time to time. Now I'm learning to sew (intermediate rather than beginner I think by now) I buy fabric and make clothes. Lace is in fashion at the moment. I made myself a lined stretch black lace suit for $45; would have cost about $200 in the shops. It's the nicest thing I've made, suits my body shape and is nice enough for business occasions.
My own style is rather dependent on how I feel when I wake up or what the weather forecast says. I have an eclectic mix of clothes from hippie style cotton kaftans (just perfect on those stinky hot summer days) to business suits (boring but necessary from time to time) to jeans and tshirts, a few pretty floral dresses for when I'm channelling the 1930s or 20s, plenty of knit tops that are transseasonal and clothes I've made myself including more knit tops. These last are clothes that look like no other - partly because I was a real beginner when I started and had to cover up duff necklines and other bits and pieces with additional bits of lace or fake fur or whatever.
My friend Sue, who is quite conservative these days, told me recently, "Some of the things you wear are really weird. But then, that's your style. If you dressed like everyone else you wouldn't be you." I think at the time I was wearing a hot pink tshirt and tights with an orange tunic over the top and red shoes. Or perhaps purple. I do prefer the term eccentric to weird though.
I did my bit towards eccentric/weird this week. I bought a copy of Burda a week ago, the German magazine (English version) which is packed chock full of clothing patterns. Really.There's a huge great pullout bit in the middle with patterns overprinted on other patterns and once you've sorted out which bits you're after, you trace them and bingo, you have a pattern. Stuff you can make - yessss!! This coincided with a 50% off sale at a fabric warehouse last weekend so armed with Burda I went to the sale and got some real bargains. More knit tops to make in beautiful shades of green, and a 1920s-influenced kimono thingy I'm going to make in patterned velvet.
This is the top in question. This version naturally looks 100% better than the one I made!
The Burda instructions for the kimono top said "easy" but I've been caught with "easy" before, so I bought some cheap purple fabric in a hurry (which on reflection looks like polo shirt material. Oh well) and some matching satin and thought I'd try to make it first out of the cheap material, to find out where any stuff ups could occur.
So that's been my nights this week, making the purple kimono. All went swimmingly until I had to attach the ties. There's a wonderful scene in the first episode of Black Books where bookshop proprietor Bernard Black is trying to do his tax. He reads the same paragraph over and over again and procrastinates, prevaricates and actually welcomes a pair of Jehovah's Witnesses to take him away from the task.
(Start watching at 1.40.)
Anyway, digressions aside, this is how I felt reading the instructions for attaching the satin ties. The instructions had been translated into English I think by a jokester or sadist who decided to leave important bits out. When I finally sorta kinda understood it, I realised it wouldn't work and devised my own method of attaching them. If I hadn't I wouldn't have been able to do the stupid thing up.
I finally finished the kimono-ish garment at nine last night. Can't wait to show my friend Sue, who will think it weird. But oh how I'll laugh if something similar shows up in Grazia this autumn!
