1873 Cotton Mourning Gown for Dia de los Muertos

November 5, 2013

Here’s the gown I made to wear at Dia de los Muertos in Old Town San Diego this past weekend. Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday to celebrate and remember our dead. It’s a very colorful and happy celebration, and Southern California has embraced it.

Since I’ve made this pattern, Truly Victorian #410 Polonaise, four times now, it went together very fast other than having major problems again getting my sleeves to fit and getting them into the armhole properly. With some help, we discovered when I’m being measured for my sleeves the common measurement around my arm for the armhole doesn’t work because I’m bigger around my mid-upper arm. When I’ve enlarged the sleeve overall, it also made it too big on the rest of my arm, and I had those silly puffs at the top of the sleeve cap. After many refittings and cutting away of excess fabric, we finally got it to fit me and fit into the armhole. At some point I need to make a pattern to use for all future sleeves.

This is the top half of the gown, the polonaise, and a lightened up photo to show the embroidered pattern on the fabric. At this point my closure is a little crooked.

Trimming this dress was a lot of fun. There’s lots of ways to do that, and I like being able to make self-fabric trims. My cotton embroidered fabric gave me some great trim once I cut it in strips to have the embroidered section near the edge where I could gather it.

I put the ruffles around the neckline and after adding an extra cuff to the bottom of my sleeves to lengthen them, I added the ruffle to that too.

That wasn’t enough for me so I bought some 5/8 inch black velvet ribbon to also go around the neckline and cuffs. And I kept going by putting two more black velvet covered buttons on each cuff.

 

Other than coming up with some way to trim the skirt, the only other thing I could come up with was a big bow on the back of the peplum. After seeing the dress on me, I think the skirt is too plain and I plan on adding a deep ruffle to the bottom of it. The skirt is pretty lightweight too and even though I tried to make a black petticoat with a ruffle for it, I didn’t get that ruffle done so there wasn’t much fullness to it.

Since I was wearing this to the los Muertos Candlelight Procession and would have flowers on my head I didn’t need a hat for it. I would be draping a veil over my head with the floral headpiece on top. My jewelry was a black and brass necklace along with a pair of black “gutta percha” earrings I bought at the SF Dickens Faire last year. My face makeup was done by Cindy's daughter, Amy, and I think she did a bang-up job. We did discover that my skin is extremely dry and it was sucking up all the white face paint and she couldn’t get a solid white look on me. Apparently my expensive moisturizer is not worth the money I spend on it. She recommended Jergens brand so I bought the shea butter deep conditioning moisturizer version yesterday.

When I arrived in Old Town, I stopped by the Whaley House to visit with my friend Robin there and then walked back to the Cosmopolitan Hotel (one of the original buildings in the park) to sit on the steps and wait for other guild members to arrive. I was about 1 1/2 hrs early so I enjoyed having my photo taken with the public who came to celebrate with us. At one point a couple furry fellows showed up and joined me for awhile, and they got more attention than me. But I got lot of compliments on my makeup and my gown.

As more of our group showed up for the procession, the “paparazzi” began gathering around us taking photos. We started a line-up on one wall and every couple minutes another guild member would show up and we got bigger.

Our favorite place for large group photos is on the steps of the Cosmopolitan.

At one point so many people were wanting to have their photos taken with us that Gina’s husband, Larry, started announcing everyone to step up on the stairs to have them taken. We did this for about a half hour until it was time to head over to the Procession starting point.

A little confusion ensued as we weren’t really sure where we were to gather this time. Apparently it wasn’t the same point as last year, and we knew the path was different so we wandered over to the other side of the park where we saw the crowds we were expecting to see. We couldn’t even get through them. We finally managed to get closer to the front and then heard “San Diego Costume Guild to the front!!” People started parting so we could get through and we managed to get up with the banner carriers.

The hard part of doing this is walking slow enough to not make it a mad dash to the end. Occasionally we came to a halt and with Melinda’s help we slowed the pace down. Its only a ten minute walk to the cemetery that was our final destination but we wanted to draw it out longer. Having hundreds of people on the sidewalks and many on the street in front of us taking photos made it very enjoyable and makes all the work and sore feet worth it.

This year the cemetery was decorated even better with many orange marigolds, the traditional flower, and candles around each grave. It’s a very small cemetery so it takes over an hour for everyone to come in, look around, and funnel out the back where we stand as guides for them.

Here you can see how limp my skirt is, and how much nicer it would look with a flounce like Cindy has on hers, along with a decent petticoat. *I just love the color technique Jerry did on this photo*

I'm looking for photos that were taken of the beautiful cemetery but so far only have this one by Debbie. 

My thanks to Gina, Kathy, & Georgina for the use of their photos, and for the many that Jerry Abuan took of us. For more of his photos, see his website here: http://jerryabuan.zenfolio.com/p934876401

Dia de los Muertos – Celebrating the Dead

October 26, 2013

Coming up next Saturday on November 2 is the annual Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Candlelight Procession in Old Town San Diego. This will be its 4^th year and I was pleased to be able to lead the procession for the first year and the following years I was joined by more and more members of our SD Costume Guild. And each year the crowds of people joining in have filled the streets and making this a highly successful event.

This year we’re being asked to up the ante and return to the roots of the Mexican holiday of Dia de los Muertos by coming in full La Calaveras Catrina faces, or Elegant Lady/Skeleton.  So everyone in the lead procession are going to be painting their faces.

These are some photos I took of some of the Calaveras Catrinas in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 2011, and just looking at them again makes me happy. They’re so colorful!

Last month I started a new 1870s mourning dress in black embroidered eyelet cotton to have a more comfortable & cooler dress to wear during our hot weather, and it’s almost done. I made it from the Truly Victorian polonaise pattern since it goes together very quickly, and is the right time period for Old Town. Now that they've requested going back to the basics of los Muertos, that leaves the costuming wide opening for what people want to wear; mourning or similar to those worn by the Catrinas. I’ve been making some pleated trim for along the neckline and sleeve cuffs out of a band of the eyelet fabric, and finishing that with black velvet ribbon. The embroidery design is not this shiny but I had to use my flash for it to show up against the black. I paid $3 yard for this at Robert’s in the Garment District, so this dress is going to be in the “very cheap to make" category. I bought velvet covered buttons at Trim2000+ there also to go on the bodice and the sleeve cuffs.

To wear with it, I bought a flowered headpiece from the Johnson House in Old Town and since the flowers were only on one side of the head band, I added more to the other side to even it out. Michael's has all their Fall flowers for 70% off right now but they had no Spring colors like the ones already on it so I had to blend the Fall ones in. Because of the different flowers, the front and back look totally different. I plan on having a black veil on the back but haven’t decided how to do my hair yet, and if I’ll be wearing a hat too. I don’t like a flat look to my head. 

During the Procession where we walk from the Old Town center square to the El Campo de Santos Cemetery, we are carrying either battery operated candle lamps, or the tall cylinder religious candles.

The candle lamps just showed up in Michael’s stores for 2 for $5.99. So the countdown is on to finish my dress this week!