One Tough Costumer — Margonia RSS

  The Paned Cap Sleeves There are two pairs of outer sleeves, the paned cap sleeves and the long sleeves. For a long time, I interpreted the paned cap sleeves as what we called "shoulder rolls".  I had been taught that they were cut as two crescents, the inner diameter of which spanned the upper two thirds of the armhole. They were seamed together, stuffed, decorated, and whipstitched into the bodice armhole.  But in recent years, I've come to the conclusion that  shoulder rolls on Elizabethan bodices, doublets, and gowns were NOT made this way. On examination of many images, they appear to actually be very short sleeves, with a gathered or puffed overlay, which was often covered with strips of fabric called panes. You...

I just looked at the calendar and there are only 86 more days till Costume College! Luckily, I've been getting a lot done.  Hopefully I'll find time to blog about it as well as do it!  Here's how I've been blinging the gown skirt.    The skirt is trimmed with the 3"  metallic trim that I hand painted. This trim has an iron on backing, but I wasn't about to trust it, since a test swatch peeled off the velvet easily.  It did work well for "basting" it in place, though. I had planned to hand sew the trim, but the iron on backing made it too tough for my arthritic hands. I machined sewed it in place using clear monofilament thread,...

When designing the Queen Of Margonia costume, one thing was evident to me from the beginning: I want bling.  This thing needs jewels and lots of them. Now obviously I can't afford to use the real thing, so I went shopping for rhinestones and glass jewels. As anyone who's ever shopped for them knows, they are not cheap, especially the largish stones I want to use.   One source kept coming up in my searches: AliExpress.com.  So I checked it out.   According to Wikipedia, "AliExpress.com is an online retail service made up of small businesses in China and elsewhere offering products to international online buyers. It is owned by Alibaba. ...It facilitates small businesses to sell to customers all over the world, and, just like Amazon,...

I'm so sorry!  I thought I had posted this two weeks ago, and it's been sitting in the "save" file the whole time. I'm back from my vacation.  The total eclipse was one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen in my life, and I urge you all, if you can, to see one.   I spent the hour or so leading up to the eclipse sitting in a camp chair working on my drawers.   They look pretty comical before the waistband is put on. A couple of people were flummoxed when they asked what I was sewing, and I held up this enormous thing and told them it was underwear. I still need to make a fingerloop braided tie...

I've started work on the first garment for the Queen of Margonia project, a pair of hand stitched drawers made from the pattern in the Italian Underpinnings package.   I don't usually hand stitch my garments, especially those that won't show in the final wearing, but I wanted a television watching project. The work is actually going faster than I expected, and is quite relaxing.  The fabric is a really nice smooth tightly woven linen, part of a set of curtains I found at a thrift store.  I've already made my husband a shirt from it, so I only have a few pieces left.  One of the pieces turned out to be exactly big enough to make the drawers.  I bought...