Frock Chick

I keep coming back to a very small handful I really want to work on, and realised I have a major love for very stark gowns.

I mean Sunburst or not on that skirt that gown would be on my Must Make list anyway.

Virginie Gautreux by JS Sargent and Rose Caron by Toulmouche.

I have actually made part of each, but I really want a nice silk satin for Mme X. I need about 8m and in a nice heavy weight that’s just not really been on the cards. But, sales are sales so fingers crossed one coincides with a bit of luck 🙂

My day ensembles have tended to also be a bit stark like my grey dress and this is in keeping with that with a touch of Worth:

Worth’s Cleopatra yellow wool dress.

I also have to admit the fabric I just cut for my new duvet cover (one of a set of curtains) has such a huge pattern it’s super tempting to make a Worth-a-like based on those oversized patterned velvets. The front is a crinkle silver with chenille waves, but the reverse.. now the reverse looks like black velvet with flat silver waves and that is just too much to resist. Well I hope I can because I *might” just be able to get a frock out of it. But I want a high necked version. That might be a bit much. The curtains had huge eyelets at the top which est into the amount that is free. That said I do have a strip.. but also my new duvet cover is so pretty that it really needs a bit of matchy matchy in terms of pillow covers.

It might be possible for a more 1890 vs 1895 look.

http://www.trademarkia.com/solidot-72191450.html

PIECE GOODS MADE OF NATURAL OR SYNTHETIC TEXTILE MATERIALS, AND PIECE GOODS MADE OF PLASTICS OF THE KIND USED FOR MAKING UP INTO ARTICLES COMMONLY MADE OF FIBROUS TEXTILES, ALL COATED WHOLLY OR PARTLY WITH THERMOPLASTIC RESINS, THE PIECE GOODS PREDOMINATING, AND BEING GOODS FOR USE BY LAMINATION FOR STIFFENING OR REINFORCING

So yes, it seems to have become a generic term as the tradmark and patents relating to the invention have expired/dissolved.

So working outward. Turns out a grandchild of the inventor of the specific solidot I think I am thinking of has a copy of his PhD.!

http://kimthew.com/2005/03/visit-to-the-peed-ii/#footnote1

¹“Instead, a series of experiments were set up to devise a form of chemical finish which would partially block the interstices of the base cloth without stiffening it, and, at the same time, would reduce the wicking effect of the yarn fibrils, which otherwise removed the water from the resin emulsion preferentially.” (Page 28.) (Back)

³If anyone’s on the edge of their seat wondering what happens in the history of fusible interlinings, or has questions about the difference between producing resin granules by wet methods and by hot compounding methods, or the importance of the Solidot process (Very Important) or the fate of Staflex (A Sad Story), you’ll have to wait until IÌve finished the book. (Back)

https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-jewish-chronicle/20091009/283021165730067

(actually yes, thinking about it the fabric I am thinking of has a slightly fishy smell, as do a lot of PVC coatings.)

And:

www.google.com/patents/US3067162

Method of forming uniform-sized plasticized resin granules and resulting product

US 3067162 A

Anyway. The fabric I am looking for appears to no longer be made. Unless perhaps if I order a 3000yard roll.

And it is the regular spacing of the granules that is important. The dots are also quite raised. So fantastic for a heavy satin as you can really melt the dots into the ground and not have it strike through!

Well dye remover. I decided rather than trek across Auckland for dye remover I’d just order some. So I did, and ordered a new cutting blade for my cutting machine at the same time because well I’m going to finally just start cutting the darn Elsa sequins! Well huge confetti circles that are 1″ across 🙂 They are translucent so once dye up will be very icy when finished 🙂

The dye remover is for my silk satin and also for something else I have forgotten.. whoops!

But I have also just spent the day detangling my very expensive lace front wig I bought for my Chistine Daae costumes.

It’s a bit frizzy for that now but ideal for doing all kinds of historic hairstyles which is fab. I just need to run a blade over the ends (designed for human hair these thin ends out and as the frizz sticks out is fairly easily cut out 🙂 )

I have read most of the first bio of Worth I got from the library. The library has two last holds for me: the Opulent Era and The House of Worth : portrait of an archive.

That second one I have not read through yet, obviously I know TOE very well 🙂 This is just saving me hunting out a copy for myself as the costume reference shelf is a little out of hand. Okay, no I do want this. I just want to find a very good quality copy!

I have the large scale edition of Costume by KCI and sadly most of the photos I am interested in were not adjusted for the larger format so are a little blurry. Luckily the section on Japanese influenced western costume is all good!

Also.

I’m buying the freaking Rocailles. I may as well do this properly if I’m going to the effort of removing all the dye then adding more. And if I have 10m of silk chiffon already decoloured just for the selvages and.. well this is the gown that started the obsession. And yes, the museum catalogue includes “metallic thread” so I was right in assuming the outlines were originally si;ver.

OMG!

So obviously the owner being rich and in New York had other worth frocks but WHAT THE HEY!@!!!!

I wish it was possible to know if all these gowns were worn my The Mrs Astor, or if they were collected. But I love her taste. I really do. And I am almost up to this section in the Worth biography so I’ll keep reading and see what the book has to say about the New York social scene. Most of the info is fantastic. Not a lot about the day to day proceedings, but a lot of info I assumed but more as well (1200 seamstresses in the 1860s????)

My OMG moment was false though, a picture of the Electric Light (Worth) gown for the Vanderbilt party  came up and I thought how could I possibly have not made the connection. And now it turns out I have lost my book with the very good copy of it.. Anyway. False Excite.

So next step is to see where the book is and possibly rescue it from the pile of books to donate….

I have decided that I know how to make line art in photoshop so let’s just do this 🙂

I had basically traced all the photos of the skirts in my books here and then traced over that while adjusting for curve. Let’s just say onion sheet is the best stuff ever 🙂

I just scanned that, and scaled to full size and have so far created paths for all elements except the hem and the curves inside the clouds.

I started with the easy-peasy straight rays of light, this is just using the pen tool on the tips and ends of each ray.

For the wavy rays I wanted to have a more regular and controlled shape so I created one ray in paths.

I started by adding anchor points regularly, shifting them to gently widen and length each curve.

Once I was happy, I stroked the path. My experience with Elsa has suggested the ideal cutting/stitching line is to use the brush on 3pxls

This was then copied and pasted as multiple layers and each one rotated and placed in position. I also erased overlapping lines.

The straight rays were merged and the wavy rays were merged to another layer.

So then I started to add the clouds. Each circle was created by using the circle line tool, stroked and copied to different layers and for each layer they were free transformed to shape. And the overlapping sections were also erased.

So now I need to create a star and cloud to repeat for the hem and also add curves to each cloud.

Once finish it will probably be flipped and printed then temporarily basted to the back and machine stitched as I had planned before.

In tidying all my beads I found my pearls again. All the pearls. The Metropolitan Sunburst gown uses faceted beads so would have glittered like a glittery thing. But I am short shighted, that effect would get very lost on me, especially while working so the more solid effect of the pearls of the Kyoto version is very tempting. It may also be down to the darkening of the lined beads (not sure what metal, but given they look nearly black.. tin? Silver?)

I’m not sure if the instagram importer will work so here is a quick grab from facebook 🙂

In this photo, clockwise from top:

~super delicate cotton tulle. It wobbles so I think it may actually be rayon. It’s still a very gold colour. So to the RIT color remover

~silk faced satin (a purchase from Cynthia Setje waaaay back in 2006! So it’s kind of perfect 🙂 ) Already knocked back to gold from green, it should soften further (6 skirt panels cut and interfaced, colour removed with pre-Dye by Dylon)

~hand drawn beading pattern (pinned to the face of my front skirt panel.) This may get swapped for a scan of my scale drawing which is more accurate 🙂

~glass pearls! You have no idea how expensive glass beads have been for the decade around my start date! These were a lucky dollar store find! (24 hanks)

~silk habotai- intensely yellow- to the RIT!

~silk chiffon- looks quite lovely, much more institutional mint in reality! To the RIT!

Not shown are my sequins and lined seed beads.

I may have enough sateen to line the bodice, but there may be a little Worth construction hunting before I commit!

http://www.arrayedindreams.com/tag/sunburst/

I don’t know if I grabbed all my lj posts- can only really grab tagged posts. But okay, now I remember why I kept stalling. And stalling, and stalling.

But this week has seen other projects able to be passed on and so a lot of reshuffling of my Must Make projects.

And I never have stopped obsessing over this thing. It started in my teens, it was one of the very first historic garments that grabbed me by the ears and shouted “this is art!” long before i found it recognised as such (any art courses dealt with fashion theory, not clothing as technical and artistic in and of itself.. textiles were seen as art, not cutting.)

Beaded tablier are an obsession so there will be a post about them at some point.