Felicity Wardrobe Project: Meet Felicity

I will do an in depth write up of this project soon, but I have finished with my Meet Felicity dress, and I am too thrilled with it not to share!

One day I'll get back to working on Belle, but Felicity is where it's at for me right now! I'll probably do her Christmas dress next, though I have another costume I need to work on for an upcoming convention first! The Christmas dress will be a bit of a test run for making a robe a la francaise before I start on my cypress dress.

18th Century Underpinnings

I started my adventure in sewing historic fashions almost a year ago. I sewed a shift and under petticoat early on and then got stuck on the stays, an essential garment for getting the proper silhouette. I finally let myself sew the boning channels of my first set of stays by machine and now I finally have my underpinnings done. Under the cut you'll find details about my process for making each of the different layers for my 18th century undergarments.

Cypress Robe a la Francaise

A few months ago I first saw the whimsical cypress embroidered robe a la Francaise from the 2018 Cora Ginsburg catalog and fell in love with it. I immediately knew that I wanted to try and recreate it. I emailed the Cora Ginsburg Gallery and asked if they would be able to send me more images and, much to my surprise and delight, they responded with a few high quality images that were not included in the original catalog pdf!

I have all the images they sent on my Google Drive for anyone who wants to see the detailed images! 

Click read more for additional information about my exciting reproduction project!

1932 Book of Authentic Colonial Costumes for the George Washington Bicentennial

I recently discovered that there were some adorable "authentic" colonial costumes made in 1932 for the George Washington Bicentennial Celebration. They are a delightful combination of my two favorite eras in fashion history and one day maybe I'll actually purchase one of the costumes if I can find one that will fit me. In the mean time, I was lucky enough to purchase a booklet illustrating all of the costumes!

I thought people would be interested in seeing all of the costumes so I took the time to scan the entire booklet and uploaded a pdf of it too my google drive. Please feel free to take a look and share it with anyone who loves vintage and colonial fashion!

Felicity Wardrobe Project: Concept and Plan

Because I need another project idea to work on, I have decided that I really want to make more historically accurate and adult versions of the outfits my favorite American Girl, Felicity Merriman, wears. This idea came to me when I was contemplating what to do for Halloween next year (I already have a plan for this year, and yes I do plan Halloween costumes a year in advance!) As a librarian, I like to go as recognizable book characters. With my new obsession with 18th century clothes, I wanted to find a character who would wear those clothes. After thinking for a short time, I remembered some of my love for the American Girl books and dolls as a kid and realized Felicity would be the perfect choice!

There are six main books about Felicity. Their covers have changed over the years, but my focus will be on the original covers and illustrations, which are the ones I read as a child and had the ones that were the basis for the doll outfits I remember.

I would like to eventually make all six of these outfits in more adult/historically accurate versions.

I would also like to make her lovely green riding habit which she never actually wears in the books but was one of my favorite doll outfits when I was a kid and appears in the paper doll sets, as seen at left. The collection of the six outfits from the book covers plus riding habit would make a wonderfully complete 18th century wardrobe. It also has many colors that compliment the outfits I want to make for 18th century Belle, so between the two I would have a very extensive wardrobe of things to choose from with a lot of different mix and match possibilities.

One major challenge with this project is that three of the outfits have very distinctive prints that are not going to be possible to find. I need to decide whether to just use whatever close approximations I can come across or whether to try and recreate the patterns digitally in order to print them from a service like Spoonflower. Right now I am leaning towards the latter because I don't think I'll be satisfied with what I can find otherwise, especially for the Meet Felicity dress. I can find floral prints I like well enough for the Felicity Learns a Lesson and Happy Birthday, Felicity! outfits, but if I'm already digitizing a pattern for one outfit, I might as well go all out!

I will not be reproducing the dresses exactly as they appear on the covers. Most of Felicity's outfits are not terribly historically accurate and even if they were, she is a nine year old girl and I am an adult woman so some changes will have to be made to make them both period and age appropriate.

Click read more for my plans so far!

Retro Royalty: Concept and Plan

I'm still slowly working on my 18th Century Belle project, I hope to get some real progress done on my stays this coming week, but have been thinking about a second project this time inspired by mid 20th century vintage-style fashions!

I would like to create vintage looks inspired by the most iconic outfits of my favorite Disney princesses. Unlike the 18th century Belle project, I will likely only create one or two outfits per character instead of their entire movie wardrobe. The outfits will be based on fashions from the 1920s through the 1950s depending on what I think suits the character the most. I will focus on the traditionally animated princesses first. Here is a list of the traditionally animated Disney Princesses:

• Snow White
• Cinderella
• Aurora
• Ariel
• Belle
• Jasmine
• Pocahontas
• Mulan
• Tiana

I will not necessarily make outfits for all of these princesses, but it's fun to come up with ideas for them. 

The first princess I have a really great idea for is Ariel. She's also the first princess alphabetically so maybe I'll go through these in alphabetical order!

Ariel:

• Purple and green gathered-front, keyhole dress with fitted skirt and bottom ruffle

Aurora:

• Pink (going for the pink version kills me a little but makes sense if I am doing a blue Cinderella dress too) long sleeved off the shoulder dress with full skirt

Belle:

• Yellow ruched cocktail dress

Cinderella:

• Blue full skirted cocktail dress 

Jasmine:

• Turquoise lounging pajamas

Mulan:

• Dark blue/light blue wrap dress with red and pink sash

Pocahontas:

• Tan fringed flapper style dress

Snow White:

• Blue and yellow dress with dull skirt and puffed sleeves

Tiana:

• Green and yellow full skirted cocktail dress

I'm not sure that I'll actually make all of these, but it's fun to come up with ideas. I'll for sure make the Ariel one though, I already have fabric for some of it!

Historic Heroes: Concept and Plan

I'm coming up with new ideas far faster than I can make them. A while back, my husband suggested doing an 18th century take on Wonder Woman which, of course, made me start thinking about how I would do 18th century versions of other comic book superheroes too. The main superheroes I keep up with are Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Batgirl so I started thinking about how I would translate their iconic outfits into and 18th century style.

Wonder Woman: Red redingcote with blue petticoat with silver and gold trim

Supergirl: Blue sacque with "S" design on stomacher and red petticoat with gold trim

Batgirl: Purple brunswick/pet en l'air with yellow lining and yellow and gold trim with stylized bat icon on stomacher/waistcoat.

If I use the same shades of red and blue for Wonder Woman and Supergirl, they could even mix and match the pieces, though the outfits would no longer be representative of specific characters at that point.

I've also had an idea for a not so heroic comic book character:

Harley Quinn: red and black zone front gown with dagged edge trim

I really love the idea of making one (or all) of these outfits to wear at comic-con type events. At this point I just want to combine all of my interests with 18th century fashion! If only I could make things as quickly as I can come up with new ideas!