Sorry for the huge lapse, RH fans. First we were prepping, travelling to, and then selling at Gulf Wars in Mississippi. Then we came home to a madhouse of new pattern production. The last of the new patterns rolled off the printers over the weekend and I am once again free to bring you all there is to know about historical clothing. *snerk*

By the way, you can see all the new patterns in the new vintage patterns section here.

Before I went AWOL, we were talking about the ideal 1920s figure.  Today, we’re going to talk about underwear.  But first, some more about…

The Ideal 1920s Figure

Have you ever seen someone modernly wearing 1920s clothing and they just don’t look right.  You wrack your brain to figure out why.  And the usual answer you come up with is:  ”We’re just bigger than they were.”  But that’s not true.  I have been through hundreds of tailor’s books and patterns from the late teens and early 1920s and none of them go below a size 32″ bust.  And that’s considered a “teen” size.  The modern size charts of one of the “Big Three” pattern companies starts adult female sizes at a bust 29.5″!

But let’s look at sizes on early 1920s patterns.  Here’s a chart:

That’s a three to six inch difference (depending on bust size) between bust and hip measurements as opposed to a mere two inch difference between bust and hip (regardless of size) nowadays.

So we’re bigger, right?  And you have to be a stick to wear 20s fashions, right?

Wrong!

See what I’m saying?  See what I’m trying to communicate to you here?

Why We Look Wrong in 20s Fashions

Famous actress Tallulah Bankhead age 23 looking like not a waif in 1925

Graphic Representation of the Ideal 1920s Figure

So why do we look so wrong when we wear 1920s fashions? The question we have to ask ourselves is “what is wrong?” Are we trying to look like an Art Deco graphic of the ideal figure (right)? Or are we trying to look like a real person (far right)? Chances are that we have the cartoon image in mind. And darlings, that just isn’t real. Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, not even Louise Brooks or “It Girl” Clara Bow were shaped like that. They all had curves.

But their curves were different. And here’s where we really mess it up.

We wear bras.

Calm down. Calm down. Before you start writing me hate mail because you are a double-D and have needed a bra since you were 11 years old, hear what I’m saying.

We wear modern bras. Modern bras push the bust up and out.  I have seen photos of many beautiful slender women (much more slender than their 1920s counterparts) wearing 20s fashions at events like the Jazz Age Lawn Party on Roosevelt Island in New York.  But they are almost always wearing a modern bra under their dresses.  And it makes them look like they’re hiding two B-52s in their blouse!

Look at Miss Tallulah at right.  Do you see where her bust is?  It is at the level of where our bra straps are today.  She probably isn’t wearing a bra at all.  Bras were not yet a support garment and movies and old photographs of quite famously fashionable people show bustlines that are far lower than “normal” to us today.

So what do you do?

Luckily there is a period solution that won’t leave you braless while not ruining the look of your 1920s clothes.

1920s corset

The 1920s corset

The corset in the 1920s (sometimes also called a “corselette”) was a very different thing from the whaleboned waist-cinchers that came before it. The purpose of the 1920s corset was not to compress the waist or lift the bust, but to flatten the bust and control the hips. More what we’d call a girdle than a corset at all, this is the garment that more zaftig women wore under their garments in the 1920s.

1920s brassieres and bandeaux

The 1920s bra and bandeau

There is an alternative to the corset that started to turn the fashion tide in the flapper era. The brassiere was invented in the early 1900s as a way to keep the bust controlled when the underbust (or at least low-bust) corset was introduced in the Edwardian period. Early brassieres were meant as bust enhancers for those who were not well endowed. Their horizontal boning was meant to imitate a large bust, not support one. But by the 1920s, brassieres had become unboned constructions of non-stretchy material designed to hold the bust close to the body. The narrow strips of darted cloth known as bandeaux had the same function.

The bandeau and brassiere could be worn with a girdle-like hip corset (to which they were attached with that hook you see in the cover art) or they could be worn alone with the new “belt” — a wide elastic band almost like a micro-mini skirt that was worn to keep the hips from jiggling.

So that’s the story. We’re not too big. We’re not too curvy. You don’t have to be a stick. You just have to throw out all your pre-conceived and mistaken notions of the 20s figure and wear the right underwear.

And guess what! Reconstructing History now has patterns available for both these 1920s undergarments and much more in our new Vintage Patterns section. Let us outfit you with everything you need to look as period-appropriate as you wanna be.

• 11 10 formal evening gowns
• 4 2 semi-formal dinner dresses
• 15 14 day dresses or ensembles
• 3 suits

But you know what we haven’t done?  Coats!  This is no Caribbean cruise, RH fans.  Crossing the North Atlantic on a ship that averages 26 knots requires a coat.  And the wardrobe I’m building requires something special.  So let’s start with a classic shape from the late 1910s — the Raglan wrap, shown at right.

A Raglan Wrap from an early 1920s German pattern book is pictured at left.  We are currently working on a pattern for this wrap.  The front of the coat can be seen in the upper left corner of the illustration.  It closes with one button at the lower waist.

The Raglan Wrap requires about 4¼ yards of 45″ wide fabric plus fur collar and cuffs. I have some lovely black velvet that I think will fit the bill nicely.

Next:  More wardrobe planning!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

Are you human?  Then you can wear clothing from that era.

Yes, my darlings.  I am here once again to correct your misconceptions of fashion history and enlighten you as to the truth.

I understand from where this misconception comes.  In almost every coffee-table book, TV documentary or website about the 1920s, you’ll hear about the hipless androgynous figure of the ideal flapper.  You’ll read about how the corset went out of fashion and the bra hadn’t yet come in.  This puts a picture in our heads of skinny little waifs, girls who aren’t fully mature.  The art of the period — often depicting women as rectangles with egg-shaped heads and stick arms and legs — reinforces this visual in our minds.  But this is a caricature that is exploded once you start looking at photographs of the period.

Would it shock you to know that the base measurements in pattern books from the 1920s are 34-26-42?  (That’s six inches larger in the hips than the modern analogous size!)  Doesn’t sound very hipless and boy-like, does it?

The silhouette of the early decades of the 20th century is columnar.  But this effect was not created by a lack of hips.  The lack of the waist is the desired end.

To understand from whence this misconception springs, we must analyze the stylish figure of the previous time period.  From the middle of the 19th century, the emphasis of fashion was on the waist.  Corsets were employed to make the waistline smaller and crinolines were used to fluff out skirts and increase the visual effect of a tiny waist.  Eventually crinolines shifted to the back in the form of bustles and then reduced to mere petticoats under the smooth skirts of the Edwardian period.  By the end of the 19th century and the very early years of the 20th, the skirts were no longer large, but the shoulders took their place and were further adorned by shirtwaists with decoration on top of decoration.  Marry this to the S-curve corsets that forced the female figure forward and we have a very top-heavy effect occurring in fashion.

Paul Poiret (center) and his models. Not a hipless androgyne among them.

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, along came Paul Poiret around 1906 discarding the corset and narrowing skirts to an unnaturally encumbering hem width.  Poiret is often given credit for this rather radical change in style, but in fact it was happening in a few different quarters at once.  The columnar shape of the 1910s was profoundly natural compared to the heavily-structured figures of the previous decades.  But that doesn’t mean that only women shaped like columns could wear these fashions.  The hourglass-figured women of the previous decade were not suddenly locked in cupboards and not allowed to show their faces in polite society.  They just did what everyone else did — they took off their corsets.

When one has an hourglass figure, wearing large skirts and over-decorated blouses tend to make the figure look larger than it really is.  We have this notion modernly that Victorian and Edwardian clothing looks good on larger women, but that the clothing of the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s only looks good on fashion models.  This is simply not true.  The return to simple, tailored forms with beading and embroidery for decoration rather than layers on layer of lace and trimmings caused women to look more slender.  The lengthening effect of the narrow skirts also made them look taller.  A survey of extant garments, patterns, and tailoring books from the time period will demonstrate figure measurements that can hardly be called “boyish” or “hipless”.  These are the same women who had hourglass figures five or ten years earlier

Famous actress Tallulah Bankhead age 23 looking like not a waif in 1925

Diaghilev dancers Sokolova and Woizikovsky in December 1924. The 28 year-old Ms. Sokolova looks like she has no waistline in this clingy knit bathing suit.

As the years progressed from the columnar 1910s to the dropped-waisted 1920s, this slenderizing, lengthening effect was not lost.  Removing the narrowing at the waist and dropping the focus of the eye to the hipline creates the illusion of no waist.  It is this “unfeminine” figure that the flappers sported, not a hipless one.  As the decade progressed, dresses hung from shoulders to hips without much change of breadth in between.  The focus was less on the female figure and more on the exquisite beadwork and embroidery that decorated many of the fashions of this time period.  In a time that ushered in a record number of rights for women, is it any surprise that fashion became about the clothing and not about the body they covered?

By the final years of the 1920s, a new trick was being employed that would become the stylistic mark of the 1930s.  Clothing began to employ the bias or cross grain which naturally clung to the body rather than requiring careful fitting and tailoring.

Archival photo of one of Madeleine Vionnet's creation on a model.

So make yourself a Vionnet Handkerchief Dress and have no fear!

Next:  More wardrobe planning!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

But first, some history (come on… you know this is what I do). The distinguishing characteristic of the clothing of the 1910s is the break it made with the styles worn before. Not since the French Revolution had clothing changed so radically in so short a period of time. In the 10 short years from 1913 to 1923, corsets went away, necklines plunged, and hemlines rose to the knees.  Can you imagine what it must have been to live back then?  Here you are, wearing chemises and corsets and petticoats and corset covers and bloomers and all this stuff even before you put on your dress.  And then suddenly, women are running around wearing dresses that are less covering than your scantiest slip!  And it wasn’t just the highly fashionable Parisian crowd who were scandalously underclad in the 1920s.  It was everyone!  The Sears catalogs from the 1920s show these short skirts and deep necklines.

But the beauty of this time period for Costume Historians isn’t the radical change of fashion.  The most interesting bit the change in construction techniques.  In the 19th century, clothing was highly structured.  Every layer depended upon the layers under it.  Fabric was cut to fit the shapes that the undergarments gave to the wearer.  When the corset and crinolines went out, there was no longer any reason to cling to this concept of structured clothing, so it went out too.  Designers such as Paul Poiret, Jeanne Lanvin and Madeleine Vionnet were renown for their technique of draping — as opposed to pattern drafting — and their exploitation of the unique properties of each fabric and how it conformed to the body.

Today, dear RH fans, we’re going to make a dress like Vionnet did… in the same manner that Vionnet did.  And you could probably do it in the time it takes you to read this blog post.

You’ve all heard of the One-Hour Dress?

Meet the 20-minute Dress.

Yes. I’m going to teach you how to make a gorgeous 1910s evening or party dress in 20 minutes, start to finish.  And by “finish”, I mean done, in the bag, ready to wear.  No finishing work required!

This is a design originated by Madeleine Vionnet in 1919. Vionnet was a master of drape, and this dress (known as The Jabot Dress because of its distinctive handkerchief decoration) was one of her favourite designs.

What you need:

• four perfectly square silk scarves (I recommend the pre-hemmed silk scarves from Dharma Trading)
• lotsa sharp pins
• needle and thread (or a sewing machine)
• 20 minutes

Lay one of your square scarves directly on top of another, wrong sides to wrong sides. The right side of the top scarf should be facing up.
	Pin the top scarf to the bottom scarf along a diagonal line running from approximately 11″ from top corner to 8″ from the bottom corner (the path of the pins is shown by the position of the rulers)
Open up the scarves on their non-pinned corner and add another scarf, wrong sides to wrong sides, to the pile. Pin the second and third scarf together as pictured above. Repeat the pinning process with the fourth scarf.
Repeat once more, pinning the last (fourth) scarf to the first scarf. Your scarves should look like the photo at right: two rows of pins traveling diagonally across the scarves.  (The fabric has been plumped up around the pins to better show their position.)

Pin each of the two adjacent corners to each other, wrong sides to wrong sides.

Put the dress on your dress form.  Adjust the pins as necessary at the neckline and armscye.  Sew along the pinline with your needle and thread or sewing machine.

Add a sash around the hips and you’re done.  (See, it’s already hemmed!)

The 20-minute Vionnet

Next:  More wardrobe planning!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

Leaving aside the underwear, nightwear, sportswear, outerwear, and incidental items, for this 19-day voyage I have determined that I will need:

• 11 formal evening gowns
• 4 semi-formal dinner dresses
• 15 day dresses or ensembles
• 3 suits

That’s 33 outfits.

It’s also 33 weeks until the Queen Mary 2 departs New York for Southhampton on 2 October, 2012.

How convenient!

*collapses from imagined exhaustion*

Okay. Let’s get down to business here. That means I have to make one outfit every week from now until we leave. The good news is that I have some outfits that are already started and other outfits that just need finishing. So those we’ll save for the weeks I’m busy with other things and can’t sew.

So it’s Week One.   This week’s outfit is a set of separates that can be worn to luncheon or around the ship during the day.

This is the skirt from RH1050 — Ladies’ 1910s Empire Costume. It is a high-waisted skirt with a narrow (not quite “hobble skirt”) profile. I had exactly 59″ of 60″ wide navy blue gabardine, so I laid out the pattern carefully, reduced the seam allowances to ¼”, and ran up the skirt.  It took about two hours from laying it out on the fabric to attaching the hooks and eyes to the opening.

The skirt is complete except for hemming (which I will do once I figure out which shoes to wear with it).  Don’t you think it screams “Lady Mary from Downton Abbey”?

Of course now we need a top to go with it.
I found some silk habotai in my stash and pulled out my RH1048 — Ladies’ 1910s Magyar Blouse pattern.

I made a few modifications to this pattern.  But they are modifications of omission, so they’re easy for anyone to do.  I cut the pattern as drafted, but I didn’t make the darts in the front and back of the pattern as shown in the instructions.  Frankly, I put it on my dress form before I sewed anything and just liked how it looked.  So I didn’t sew those two lines you see on the pattern cover.

Also, I didn’t want a collar so I skipped that part.

And then I realised that I laid out the pattern backwards!  LOL  Just goes to show that even professionals can make mistakes.  I laid out the pattern for a front closure rather than a back closure.  But that’s okay because I really like the look of a front closure on this blouse.

I french seamed the side seams and roll hemmed all the edges of the habotai blouse.  Then I closed the front of the blouse with the smallest snaps I could find so it wouldn’t distort the line of the blouse.

And… Voilà!  Week One Outfit One.  Done!

Tomorrow:  More wardrobe planning!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

You see, Cunard started the first regular Transatlantic crossings with RMS Britannia in February of 1840.  Charles Dickens sailed on her in January of 1842.  It took her 10 days to do the Halifax to Liverpool route at an average speed of 11 knots.  She was the fastest steam ship of her time.

Cunard’s RMS Queen Mary 2 — the ship I will be taking on this voyage — is the largest ocean liner currently in service.  She is the largest ocean liner ever built.  She was the largest passenger ship at the time of her building in 2003, but she has since been superseded by some cruise ships belonging to Royal Caribbean.  However, she remains the largest ocean liner in active service.

When one speaks of history and large passengers ships, that inevitable question comes up: How does she compare to RMS Titanic, the “Greatest Ship Ever Built”. Well, see for yourself. The Blue silhouette is Titanic. The Grey, QM2.  She can accommodate 3056 passengers and 1253 officers and crewmembers compared to Titanic’s 2453 and 885.  Additionally Titanic’s cruising speed was 21 knots and her max speed, 23 knots.  QM2 cruises at 26 knots but her open ocean speed is 30 knots.

RMS Queen Mary 2 was named after the first RMS Queen Mary, a Cunard ship in service from 1936 until 1967 (the year of my birth).  The original QM sits permanently docked in Long Beach Harbour in California, still operating as a lovingly-preserved Art Deco hotel.

Historically, the first Queen Mary is very important to the history of ocean liners.  While she was under construction on the River Clyde in Scotland, Cunard and White Star (owners of Titanic) merged.  Cunard and White Star had been rivals since the 1840s but the Great Depression nearly bankrupted both companies.  Cunard being the majority shareholder of the merged company, construction on the final White Star liner Oceanic III was halted and the White Star vessels began to be phased out.  By 1950, there would hardly be any remnant of the White Star name.

RMS Queen Mary (the original ship) was named after Mary of Teck, Queen of England and consort to George V.  On my voyage, I am planning to wear a wardrobe from the 1910s through the 1930s.  George V was King from May 1910 (upon the death of Edward VII) until his death in January 1936.  (Thus the oft-used label of the Downton Abbey/Titanic Era of “Edwardian” is completely incorrect.  The period should in fact be termed “Georgian”.)

RMS Queen Mary 2 was named after RMS Queen Mary.  Thus I will be sailing on a ship that gives honour to the grandest ship on the ocean during the reign of George V, dressing as someone from the reign of George V, and celebrating my birthday which occurred in the final months of that ship’s ocean-going service.

Kismet…

Tomorrow:  More wardrobe planning!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

Mary Brooks Picken deserves some of the spotlight here. Born in 1886, she founded the Women’s Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences in Scranton, PA. She was the first woman to be named a trustee of the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council Advisory Committee on Women’s Clothing that selected Hattie Carnegie as the designer of the United States Army’s women’s uniform and provided advice and assistance on all elements of the women’s uniform beginning in 1949.

And if that weren’t enough, she was the first female author of a dictionary in the English language — The Fashion Dictionary in 1957.

She has ninety-six books to her credit, all of them about sewing and the needle arts, most of them written in the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s and therefore very useful to our purpose. These are not etiquette books written for the upper crust, but rather how-to texts written for women who would be making rather than buying or ordering their wardrobes. From my perspective, Mary Brooks Picken has given me a how-to book for my Dream Birthday Trip.

Now let’s dive into this…

Among chapters on Good Taste, Charm in Dress, the Right Underclothes, and Overcoming Irregularities in Figure, there is a extremely valuable section called “Planning Wardrobes”. And it is to that section that this post will mostly refer.

Along with lists of the proper clothes for a young school girl as well as a collegiate miss, there are sections on wardrobe essentials for both homemaker and business woman. Of course the Trousseau is covered beautifully.

There is also a section “Clothes for Traveling”. Furthermore, the darling woman has broken them down further into lists By Train, By Boat, and By Automobile, taking into consideration the different situations of luggage accommodation as well as social occasion involved in each.

Oh goodie, goodie, goodie!

While she doesn’t say so emphatically, it appears that the list is meant to accommodate a week of travel. The list calls for a coat, 2 dark silk dresses or 1 dark silk dress and a suit, 1 semi-formal dress, 1 hat for traveling, 1 larger hat for dress-up frocks, 4 sets of undergarments, 1 slip, 1 pair bloomers, 4 to 6 pairs of hose, 3 or 4 nightgowns or sets of pyjamas, a kimono or “Pullman” robe, 2 pairs of slippers for daily wear, 1 pair of pumps, 1 pair bedroom slippers, 1 pair of overshoes, 1 pair service gloves, 1 pair dress gloves, handkerchiefs, 1 scarf of silk, wool or fur, 1 umbrella, 1 generously-sized purse, another dark wool dress, a heavy coat, and an evening gown, dark in colour and conservative in cut.

Okay. Well. Hmmm… Not exactly the glamourous period wardrobe I envisioned.

So let’s toss out the list!

What we need to do is count the travel days, count the different occasions for which I’ll need to dress, and then figure out what is appropriate to wear on those occasions.

You with me?

Cunard has rearranged its website a bit, so I’m not finding a list of evening entertainments by journey. Typically, the dinners on the first and last night of the trip (in this case, October 2nd, 7th, 14th and 20th) are informal. The rest of the dinners are formal. On Transatlantic Crossings, they have what they call “Royal Nights” which are themed balls. When I was last on QM2, there was a Black and White Ball and a Buccaneers’ Ball, but I think the Buccaneers’ Ball is only on Caribbean trips. I’ve heard mention of the Royal Ascot Ball and the Masquerade Ball, but I have no idea if these occur on every Transatlantic Crossing. I’ll have to find out. I couldn’t be caught without something Black and White or *GASP* a costume for the Masquerade!

Plus one formal dinner on the Orient Express.

So that’s:

• nine formal dinner gowns
• four informal dinner dresses

There may need to be different dresses for dancing if some of the evening gowns won’t accommodate dancing. And if there are special themed Balls, there will definitely be different gowns for each theme.

Then I’ll need something to wear to board each conveyance:

• three boarding suits with matching hats

And day dresses to wearing during the day:

• twelve day dresses

There also need to be lounging outfits. There is a lot of lounging on a Transatlantic Crossing.

• five lounging outfits

Then there’s sleepwear:

• twelve nightgowns or pyjama suits

And underwear… and stockings… and slips… and… and… and… My God! What have I gotten myself into!?!?!

*faints*

Tomorrow: You gotta start somewhere!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

I dreamed of a world as shiny and Deco as the Chrysler Building, picked out in white and black and chrome, captioned in a clean sans serif font. I dreamed of travel by train, where a Lady Must Wear the Proper Hat™. I dreamed of travelling to all those gorgeous foreign places forbidden in my youth in the 1980s — Bucharest, Prague, Baghdad… I dreamed of charming jewel thieves on the Riviera and murder (never anyone I knew, of course) on the Nile.

But more than anything, I dreamed of the clothes. I dreamed of being that impeccably-dressed woman with her supremely-efficient lady’s maid. I dreamed of parting a crowd by merely walking through it as passers-by stopped to stare at my wonderfully-matched suit in gorgeous cashmere melton. Most of all, I dreamed of the perfect hat and my curls always placed in the most becoming way around it.

When I got married, we couldn’t go on a honeymoon right away. But a year and a half later, Cunard had a special, so Bob and I took the Queen Elizabeth II to Southampton and stayed a couple of days in London. We dressed as best as we could. I wore evening gowns to dinner every night. I admit that they were all left-over bridesmaids’ dresses sold at a discount by our local bridal shop because the weddings had been cancelled. But they were evening gowns and I was on a Cunard ship on my honeymoon! Who cared that we didn’t even have a porthole. There is something so inspiring about those stacks of red with their black tops. But I was sure, back in 2003, that we were experiencing the last days of Transatlantic Crossings. I knew Queen Elizabeth II wouldn’t sail much longer.

And then they built Queen Mary II. And Queen Victoria. And now there’s a new Queen Elizabeth sailing the seas. The Golden Age of Ocean Travel lives again.

The Dream
When you near your 40th birthday, there is a natural tendency to look back upon your life and think about how far you’ve come and what you’ve achieved. There is also a desire to do what you haven’t done yet — to mark this milestone in a grand way, to celebrate middle age lest we dread it.

Aye! Aye! Captain! *rowrl*

On my 40th birthday, I desperately wanted to take a Transatlantic Crossing on the QM2, take the Orient Express following the route in the book by Agatha Christie, and return home on the QM2, all while dressed in a fabulously period wardrobe.

I started saving for this trip when I turned 35. Unfortunately financial circumstances deemed that there were more pressing uses for the money, and I got lunch and a private tour of Eastern Pennsylvania for my 40th birthday.

The Plan
Well, this year is my 45th Birthday. And I am determined to achieve what I did not five years ago.

Look. I’m a clothing historian. I make period patterns for a living. My favourite time period has always been the early 1930s. With the success of Downton Abbey and Boardwalk Empire, I have learned a great deal about the clothing of the 1910s and 1920s.

I produce patterns and clothing for this time period. I have the skill to make everything I want. I have the knowledge to know what to make for a complete traveling wardrobe for the Golden Age of Ocean Travel. I can do this.

Today is the 13th of February. It is precisely eight months until my 45th birthday. That’s 33 weeks until I have to board the ship. And isn’t 33 a lovely number?

If I have to sleep in the bilges to make this happen, I will do it!

Tomorrow we’ll delve into some books I have from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s that tell you what a lady should have in her traveling wardrobe. Then we’ll get down to brass tacks and figure out how many outfits I need to make to take this journey.

Carole Lombard and friends in their skivvies

Then we’ll start building my wardrobe. Stay tuned to the blog as I build every piece of my wardrobe from underwear and nightwear to lounging ensembles and sportswear to dresses for afternoon tea, evening gowns, beautiful traveling suits, and dresses suited to the tango!

And hats! Oh my yes HATS!

But it’s probably best to start from the inside out. And that means SKIVVIES!!!

(Isn’t it wonderful that Cunard doesn’t have any luggage restrictions? Yes, I could literally take steamer trunks full of period clothing. And they even carry them to your cabin for you!)

So here is the itinerary:

• Eastbound Transatlantic Crossing on Cunard’s Queen Mary II — 2-8 October, 2012
• Rail Journey from London to Venice on the Orient Express — 11-12 October, 2012
• Westbound Transatlantic Crossing on Cunard’s Queen Mary II — 14-21 October, 2012

Now go post this on every blog, website, forum, social media site, and billboard you can. The more patterns I sell, the more likely I am to be able to do this. And I’ll have you all to thank!

© 2012 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material.

When I received the fabric, I saw at once that it was not a satin weave. More importantly, it is far too light and flimsy to be the base of this gown. This type of tunic and sheath evening gown needs a solid base, and this wasn’t going to work. So I sent it back and ordered some duchesse satin instead.

Of course this means I may not have the gown done in time to wear at Reenactor Fest. But remember that I have a Plan B and that’s coming along just fine. And it’s not like I won’t get a chance to wear this gown elsewhere this year, most notably at the Titanic Dinner at Dress U in June that RH is sponsoring.

So while I’m waiting, I thought I’d work on the mockup in cheap cotton muslin. Please excuse the fact that I didn’t feel like ironing my scrap fabric.

Here are three photos of the bodice mockup on my dress form over my 1910s corset.

Here are two photos of the skirt mockup on my dress form over the bodice mockup.

That’s all for today.

Okay. It’s not all…

It’s 3:30pm now, and I’ve been looking at my dress form all afternoon. Something was wrong.  You see, this gown is supposed to have a Directoire waistline.  As it is, I have the skirt joining the bodice at the bottom edge of the bodice, which is on the upper hips.  This creates a nice natural waist, but it’s not the waist position of the original gown.

So I moved the skirt to the Directoire position:

Et voilà!  I think the whole thing actually fits better!

Remember that we are now taking pre-orders for the pattern I’m doing this construction to test. You can order it here. It will ship in mid-February.

Tomorrow… Who knows?

Buy patterns for Downton Abbey and Titanic Era clothing here!