Over My Head?

Courtesy of Demode, I got pulled into the 18th Court Ensemble brigade. Though I don't have the budget to travel to the next Costume Con, I can post and share pictures of what I do. Price is also why I'm making it 60cm sized rather than for me. Like with the Meiji Schiap outfit, Kozu will be my model.

I did a lot of poking around online to see if there was any outfit that caught my fancy. The thought of making panniers and the appropriate petticoats didn't appeal to me. So I started looking at China, and found several male court tunics that looked pretty, but didn't grab me. Also, a tunic isn't a full outfit, and I'm not so familiar with the rank insignia that copying the symbols would feel disingenuous.

I turned to Japan, and went to the Costume Museum in Kyoto. The Edo period is pretty long and engulfs all of the 18th century. None of the dates listed for the outfits I was eying was any more specific than "late" or "early." Likewise, there were no Western years given. I have to estimate.

The formal court clothes of early Edo, looked nicer than the late. By this I mean it looked more lived in, and less a full body prop. However, to replicate this would mean I'd have to create a whole lot of layers, and find a way to replicate the patterned cloth. I seriously doubt my patience on this regard. Similarly, I liked the Ooku garb. It looked simple, but the patterns on the clothes were quite pretty. Again, I don't think I have the mental stamina to do it all without long breaks in between.

I could mimic the patterns with embroidery, but I'm also aware that it's easy for me to bite off more than I can chew. It's happened before. -_-; I could try and use brocade, and maybe I can find something in the right scale, though I doubt I'd find patterns I'd find suitable. Other options include batik, of which I have very little experience, or ordering custom fabric from Spoonflower. The latter would be pretty tricky, since the clothes don't have an obvious repeat and the patterns are asymmetrical. With lots of time and thought I can pull it off, but at the moment it doesn't appeal to me.
  
With these considerations in mind, I've settled on this ensemble. It's an informal court outfit, with easy to find materials and rectangular construction. Also, that orange is eye catching, as is the size of the model's ogoshibakama (posh trousers.)

 

When I was out and about earlier near the garment district, I decided to take the plunge and pick up some orange silk. I could use a cheaper material, or buy inexpensive silk and dye it. However, since this project is already much more frugal than it could be, one or two small indulgences can't hurt. At the shop, I found the perfect fabric at $39 a yard.

I kept looking. 

After a lot more looking around, price checking, and asking about minimum lengths, I got half a yard of a somewhat cheaper silk. It's slubby and hence unlikely to be worn by a posh courtier, but the sticker shock isn't as strong, and the color is fabulous.

 

Giving In To Temptation

There is a sewing contest afoot, and dolly sewers are welcome to compete! I hope to make an outfit along the "My Favorite Things" theme.

With me being a fan of many things Japanese and particularly school clothes, picking that was a no brainer. As this is supposed to be historical costuming, and I don't know what the era limit is, I'm erring on the side of caution. The Meiji era ended in 1912, and the website covers clothes up to the 1920s, so I'll be going with a Meiji schoolgirl look.

That said, the first idea that came to mind was an outfit along the lines of Elsa Schiaparelli. Alas, while I squeed inside over her outfits I dug up, nothing clicked until I decided to mix her with with an older, foreign style. This outfit, this embroidery, and this hat especially grab my fancy.

The books I'll refer to for this project is Kimono: Fashioning Culture by Liza Dalby, Schiap's autobiography A Shocking Life, and Impossible Conversations by the Met Museum.

Colorful Kasuri

This is one of a set of dresses I made for a doll I planned for, but who didn't work out. The clothes are now for the red-headed sisters. The pattern is another Bleuette, and i don't remember why I eventually chose to enlarge it.

The point of the outfit is to show off the material. One vacation, I bought a scrap of vintage kasuri and wanted to show it off in something. There's not very much of it, so it needed to be an accent rather then the whole thing. Hence, it became the vest, waistband and the sleeve cuffs.

Most of the outfit comes from fabric older than me. The light blue is from my mom's old stash, and I needed to cut carefully in order to have enough for the gathered yoke front and have enough left over for the skirt. As it so happened, the skirt was so narrow it made the whole thing look unbalanced, and I didn't have enough to piece in a fuller skirt. I took some triangles of cotton teal and used those as gores to make the skirt wider. I think the brightness of the teal goes well with the kasuri.

Front bodice detail

As a last note, since I ran out of blue toned thread and I am in no mood to get more, for the hem I decided to machine sew it in black, and then add another row to make a decorative edging.

A Serbian Outfit

This outfit was an exercise is using old cloth. The materials used were antique silk, and I didn't have much of it.

The challenges of the dress portion was how to make a skirt long enough to go past the knees. This was a bit tricky as the pattern I chose, Bleuette's Serbian ensemble, has a rather high waist. The cloth also had a fair amount of holes, so in cutting around the damaged portions, I might have had enough for a shirt. Instead, I opted to embroider flowers over the holes.

Fun with Dyes

One of the swaps I participated in had the theme of unfitted clothing. Wrapping, draping, and loose fits can look really pretty, and there was the added advantage of not having to tailor perfectly for a doll you didn't have exact measurements for.

For me, it meant a chance to play with dyes, which I hadn't done for a while. Wool and silk dye nicely with food coloring and vinegar, which is great in terms of price and safety. I had some natural colored silk on hand, so I set out to make a sari....

...Unfortunately, the sari had ample amounts of pink, a color my partner was quite clear about not wanting. Attempts to overdye it into dark red turned it into an unappealing shade of brown red. I contacted the swap organizer explaining that I had a mishap and I needed an extension, and looked over my material. It still had a lot of usable parts, and my partner said that she would also like Japanese clothing as long as it wasn't a kimono or obi. I ended up making a sodenashi, a type of vest.

It's not the prettiest cut, but my partner adored the colors and work I put into it, so all is well.