2022 ROUND-UP & REVIEW

This is where, at the end of the year, I will either embarrass myself, or surprise myself, at what I accomplished this last year.

I started my year just puttering around with a few things, trying to get some motivation to finish any of my dresses. When the theme for the Riverside Dickens fashion show in February was announced, “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire”, I had to look through my closet and see what could be finished in time for that. It turned out I had an 1830s dress very close to completion. It was one that I had converted to a front opening. In doing so, I got at least one of the 1830s dresses done that was on my list, and got to wear it in the fashion show.

Afterwards I went back to puttering around and remembered an antique hat I’d bought YEARS ago that had been refurbished for theatrical use. The original ribbon and buckle were on the wire frame hat but the fabric covering it was sad and dingy. I painstakingly took it apart, photographing it, and used the pieces for a new pattern. I’ve not yet had a chance to wear it. During the same time, I decided it would make a great hat to go with my wedding dress that I was going to take apart and turn it into a 1905 dress. It was one my mom made me, and she gave me her blessing to do this. It required a lot of unstitching, but until I can get back to the Los Angeles Fabric District to look for some lace fabric to extend it, it’s been put on the back burner.   

 All while I was doing that, I was also working on writing the fashion show for the Port Townsend Victorian Festival in WA. It was our first year back after the Pandemic, and it was going to be fabulous, with many new local models, and young girls wearing a collection of antique white dresses. Rather than try for something new, I wore my 1855 green & white cotton voile dress. I’ve decided I need to make a flat straw hat for it next time I wear it.

At the same event I finally got to wear two of my 1890s skirts and blouses I’d made to wear there back in 2019 before the shutdown. I refurbished an antique 1893 hat for one, and trimmed another with florals for the other.

Of course, every time I come back from an event; I want to sew all the things. One that kept staring me in the face was my gold and blue plaid bustle dress. I dug out the red trim I’d bought for it, and sewed it onto my lapels, cuffs, and all around the overskirt (not shown in the photo). This one will most likely get finished at the next sewing workshop in January. It needs its buttonholes & boning, and skirt hemmed.

Everyone on Facebook is probably tired of hearing about my blue and black plaid polonaise dress I was copying from an extent dress. But it too is almost done. I got the ruffle sewn and attached to the skirt hem, and then hand-sewed the black velvet ribbon around the edges of the polonaise and on top of the ruffle, because my machine wouldn’t go through it. It recently got a Christmas present of a custom made black 1880s bonnet, made by SHOCKING BAD HATS , that is just adorable! I haven’t decided on what kind of buttons to use on it yet, maybe some of my black glass ones will work. But other than the sleeves, it’s going to be finished in time to wear to the Riverside Dickens fashion show in February 2023.

The big event of the year for me was going back to Costume College at the end of July, after a 2-year hiatus due to the Pandemic. Physically I wasn’t much up to doing a lot, and was happy when I was asked to run the Costume Exhibit there. It was like running a fashion show but with no bodies. Well, there were mannequins. Also, I didn’t feel like making anything new quite yet but did manage to finish an 1890s dressing gown that I wore to the Sunday breakfast, and during the entire day. It was very comfortable. I also taught two classes on costume accessories for the 1800s. For other dressing up, I pulled out outfits from my closet already done.  During the Friday Night Scavenger Hunt, I wore my Carmelite Nun outfit and sat outside the Exhibit during that to introduce all the new folks to it, and then went out to dinner with friends in an 1890s evening dress. This made my transition back to attending less stressful on me.

A good part of my year was spent packing and unpacking our house, and then later packing up my black hole of a sewing room, while we had our tile floors & carpet demolished and redone with wood. That all started in March and ended in September with having a lot of boxes and piles still needing to be put away. Needless to say, this threw me off track doing any sewing. I worked on that blue & black plaid dress a few times but kept getting interrupted so I couldn’t focus on it. I’m hoping after the holidays, I can once again get myself back on track with that.

I didn’t have any other costume events the rest of the year until at the beginning of November, we held our second fashion show at the Lantern Crest Senior Community. I wrote that theme as “Movies & Costume Magic”, to show the audience our dresses that matched time periods of the movies we each picked to dress for. Once again, we were asked if we could do it for other locations, so I’m waiting to hear back on those.

That was pretty much it for my entire year. Right now, I’m waiting to see what new outfit waves its arms at me, and says Make me! Make me! Let’s see what the new year brings!

Oh, and my baby girl, Chloe, celebrated her 20^th year sewing with me! 

ANOTHER FASHION SHOW FOR THIS YEAR

 

This last weekend we did our 2^nd “annual” fashion show at the Lantern Crest Retirement Community. I had hoped last year after we did the first one in November 2021, and had a few people mention they’d like us to do one for other locations, that we would be able to book a few more. But nothing came through. And the retirement communities had to lock down again due to more Covid outbreaks. So, I was happy this year that this one was eager for us to come back.

Thinking up themes for my fashion shows are always fun. Most of the time we just do a timeline with no real theme per se. But it does allow you to have more to talk about if there’s a theme involved. It didn’t take me long to come up with our recent one, Movies & Costume Magic. This was again for a group of non-costumers, so it helps to have them relate the time period of our outfits to a movie they were familiar with. This opened it up to stretching out the years we would normally encompass. We started back in the 1180s, and ended in the 1920s.

I asked the models to pick a movie to match the time period their dress would have been worn in, or if they couldn’t think of one, we dug around for an appropriate movie to match. And I wanted the movies to be familiar to this older crowd, so not too old, and not too recent or obscure. The introduction to each movie was just the basics of what it was about and the time period it was placed in. 

Our first movie was The Lion in Winter, with Jody wearing her 1180s queen’s gown she copied from the Glenn Close version of the movie. Then Terri picked 1810 for Pride & Prejudice. My purple dress was 1830s and from the PBS series, Victoria.   

Gina dressed in 1850/60s for Gone with the Wind. She was followed by Cindy in 1870s The Forsyte Saga. Windy also wore 1870s for The Age of Innocence.

Moving into the 1880s was Shelley from the early version of The Matchmaker. Then we had a mother / daughter team from 1880s Tombstone, Shannon and little 5-year-old, Maya, wearing the dress her Mama made her. Lisa also dressed in the 1880s, from the Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder by Decree.

Jumping ahead a few years was our narrator, Nancy, in her 1912 suit from Titanic, and her husband, Russell in his traveling suit, who also acts as our gentleman escort around the stage. June wore her 1918 dress for Somewhere in Time, and we finished off with Kathleen jazzing it up in The Great Gatsby.

These were a few candid photos some of us took as we were waiting for the show to start.

*Thank you to Jody and Shelley for the photos taken here*

After our show, we walked around among the audience so they could take a closer look at our dresses, and again were asked questions about them. We were contacted by one resident about possibly doing a show for her Women’s Club, and another who would like to donate her antique clothing to me for us to use. So, I’m waiting to hear from them.

Afterwards I invited all our ladies back to my house for a chance to change, relax, and have some snacks. We did manage to get a semi-group photo of most of the group but were missing a few.

I was contacted the next day by a friend of one of the models who asked about us also doing a show at her retirement village next Spring. So, I hope things will start picking up again.

And I won the “Dufus of the Day” award. While I was hanging up my purple dress yesterday and connecting the hooks & eyes, I suddenly remembered this was the dress I had converted to a front closure, but I had accidentally put it on backwards, forgetting I had done that. No wonder it was a bit bunchy in the front. I’m going to need to figure some way to indicate that next time in case I don’t wear it again for a year. 

Bits & Pieces, and Costume College 2022

Here it is two months after my last blog post, and what have I done? Only bits & pieces of a couple different outfits. Real life had a habit of breaking up my days and weeks so it was hard to focus on doing much.

First off, I’m sorry I didn’t even write anything about Costume College this year. I ended up spending most of my time this year running the costume exhibit there. Due to the reduced number of attendees this year, and half of them being new, we didn’t have very many volunteers to help us run the entire college. Since there weren’t too many classes I wanted to attend (and there were less of those this year too), I was ok with that. Due to my Covid fatigue, and problems with my knee, this turned out to be a good fit for me this year. With the help of my friends there, we were able to set up the exhibit how I visualized it.

Instead of just asking for submissions of whatever people wanted to send, I created a theme of "Inspirations: From Start to Finish". My idea was the exhibitors would share a photo of something that inspired them to make their costume, be it from a movie, book, fashion plate, or extant clothing, and in any genre, alongside their finished outfits. The sign included an explanation of their inspiration and how they achieved it. Then I placed them in the room according to their “theme”.

 

This 1850s dark purple dress was my own contribution. I hadn’t worn it to CoCo yet, so I may need to in the future.

By choice, I didn’t attend the Gala dinner & dance, or the tea, mostly because I can’t taste anything so it’s a waste of money for me. But I did join my friends for dinner at our favorite Maggiano’s Italian restaurant and wore my 1890s Mulberry dress for that.  And on Friday night I wore my Carmelite Nun outfit while sitting outside the Exhibit during the Passport to the End of the World scavenger hunt, where everyone learned where everything was. Neither of these photos were taken there, so I just have previous photos to show the outfits I wore. I made it easy on myself this year, not having to sew anything new.

The one outfit I did get a photo of onsite was my 1890s wrapper, which I finished recently, that I wore for the Sunday Breakfast, and then during the rest of the day. It was quite comfortable wearing it.

I did teach two classes this year; Accessories: 1800-1850, and Accessories: 1850-1900. I had mostly full rooms, and the majority of attendees were new to CoCo, and I loved hearing that. I’m always happy to see new interest in the historical stuff.

 

Here is the theme announcement for the 2023 Costume College, if you haven’t heard it yet, "Cosplay: Fairytales, Fiction and Fantasy". From the Dean: What is Cosplay to me? Cosplay is the act of dressing in any COStume and PLAYing a character from any period, book, movie, or graphic art. So, in essence, it is what we as costumers do. This includes all types of costumes, such as historical dress, fictional characters, book to screen characters, anime, fantasy characters, and even woodland creatures." No dates have been set for next year yet, but its always the last weekend in July, sometimes going into August.  

Of course, I came home all excited to start sewing again, as happens whenever I attend a costume event. But during the weeks prior to Costume College, my hubby had decided it was time to pull the carpets out of my sewing room and his office, which meant everything had to come out and packed up. Afterwards I was able to get my computer & TV set back up, and also my sewing table. I hung some of the costumes I’d been working on the last two years in my closet and could stare at them each day, waiting to see which one called to me first. The first thing I pulled out was my 1887 Autumn Plaid bustle dress that basically just needed its trimmings, buttons/buttonholes, and hemming. It was a small step but I sewed the red soutache trim around the lapels & cuffs, and around the plaid overskirt hem. The buttons on this are just pinned on at this point. Then I had to pack up my Mom’s senior living apartment and move her to an assisted living apartment, so that got any more progress stalled.

When another sewing workshop came up, I got enthusiastic about starting yet another dress, this time copying an 1880s polonaise (not an 1870s). I’d been saving this brilliant blue plaid rayon acetate fabric just for this. I had 14 yards of this soft fabric, and bought it really cheap on ebay due to some tiny holes in the fabric, which I’ve been able to cut around. Because of the type of fabric it is, I’m flatlining it with a black cotton. Its kind of thin so it needs the cotton support behind it. I was able to cut out the bodice and skirt at the workshop, and am cutting the flatlining now.  

During the last two weeks, I suddenly felt like I needed some hand-sewing to relax and de-stress over everything life was throwing at me, so I brought out the three 1860s dresses I had started on my “assembly line” way back in Aug 2020. They were pretty much constructed but still needed the waists cartridge pleated to the waistband. So, my assembly line came out for those, and while bingeing on “Breaking Bad” on Netflix, they now all have their waistbands attached. Still left to do on those are the buttons/buttonholes and hems.

 

At this point I don’t have any events that any of these outfits are needed for so that may be a determining factor what gets done first, or I move onto something else if the mood strikes me. Its better than doing nothing, even if its just bits and pieces.