1850's Flounced Skirt with Sheer Basque

I love the 1850's.  I love the fru-fru puffiness with layers upon layers of silks, ribbons, and lace.  I like the detailedness of it all.  Luckily, I do far more docenting (at a house that was built in 1853) than 'reenacting' so I have the ability to do a variety of dresses and get use out of them.  Now, mostly I use my 1860's gowns for Liendo, but I've always wanted one REALLY 1850's dress.  You know, something that is so 50's.  Very intricate and full.

         

          

Fortunately, Puresilks recently had some silk at $6 a yard so I snapped up 2 dress lengths.  The people at PureSilks were awesome!  Neither of the colors that were $6 were in stock, so they let me pick any custom color I wanted.  I ordered one in an emerald green shot with electric blue.  Ther other one was a sky blue tissue taffeta.  Even though it was blue, I immediately thought of these dresses:

Even though they were pink, I felt the blue fabric wanted to be made into something like this.  Plus, they have my absolute 2 favorite things in dresses: flounces and scallops.  Perfect!

I wanted to have them done before Landmark Inn on March 18th.  I got the fabric March 14th and spent the better part of 2 days figuring out the math to make the flounces.  I still don't have it right.  When I gauged the skirt, it pulled up the top layer and made it shorter, thus making it look like the second flounce was much too long.  All I need to do is put the second flounce 2 inches higher.  It shouldn't take too long, but I went ahead and wore the skirt anyway.

With the skirt, I made a sheer voile basque with it.  The weather was going to be over 80 degrees Fahrenheit so I didn't want to wear my velvet basque.  The effect turned out quite lovely and it was very cool.  I wore with the ensemble a straw hat trimmed with green and blue ribbon, covered in the veil (I got neither the new bonnet or the parasol completed in time).

The flounces themselves have little scallops within the larger scallops.  I accomplished this is a scallop rotary blade. Here are some pictures of the progress and some close ups of the flounces.

I didn't use anything to keep them from fraying so they are fraying a little.  Not a lot, though.  I used some fray check for the very bottom tier because I knew it would get a lot of wear.  It discolored the silk a little so I decided to only do that for that flounce.

I like the seated pictures best because they don't show the unevenness of the tiers.  That will need to be fixed before I wear it again.  I am very pleased with the overall effect, though, and look forward to my next project.

Parasol Transformation... From Battenburg to 1850's, Part One: Research

When I first started living history, I felt the need to buy a parasol.  I couldn't afford a *real* parasol at the time so I bought a cheap $10 child's size Battenburg parasol and recovered it in silk scraps for my first event.

I bought this one because it was made of wood with nearly no plastic.  The ribs are metal and the tips, finial, and handle are wooden.  The only plastic is the piece that pushes the ribs up to open the parasol.  I knew that Battenburg lace was not correct for mid-century parasols, but figured that I could recover it in silk scraps for my first event and eventually fix it up to where it is really presentable.  When opened, the diameter of the parasol is about 20", which fits in around where most period ones were.

Here is how the current parasol sits:

Now the parasol handle is much too short for period usage.  I decided that I wanted to make a folding parasol and add length that way.  Now the decision was what medium to make the handle from.

I could have someone whittle down a wooden one.  Other options included making reproduction (imitation) coral from resin (a period recipe) but I couldn't figure out how to make a nice mold.  Someone on the Sewing Academy mentioned trying to use polymer clay to make a reproduction coral.  I decided to try something similar, except use an off-white clay to imitate bone/ivory instead.  I would really like to try coral someday, but white/off-white clay was much cheaper than the red.  I might try coral for some jewelry pieces.

I'm going to make my parasol with fringe.  The silk I'm recovering it with is emerald green (or possibly chocolate brown-I haven't decided yet).  I can either fringe it in green (or brown), or fringe some of the white silk I have and use that instead.  Here are some examples of period parasols with fringe and intricate coral/bone handles:

I'm using these two coral handles as my inspiration:

I used to do quite a bit of cake decorating with fondant.  Theoretically, playing with clay uses the same principles. I guess we'll find out if I still have the skills or not.  I'm going to use my fondant tools to be working on the roses and I bought a mold for the leaves.  I should be able to get everything else the way I want it.  I think I have the folding mechanism figured out, too, but I need to play with it some more.  It needs to be done by next Saturday because I have an 1850's event at the Landmark Inn in Castroville then.  It'll get worked on quickly because I have several other projects I want done before Castroville, too.  It's a good thing it's spring break!