Because every so often, I have an absurd idea

At the end of last year, pretty much out of the blue, I developed an interest in the English Middle Ages - roughly, from the Norman Conquest to the end of the Wars of the Roses. I have always been interested in history, but what era I find most fascinating changes from time to time. (I suspect this current change may have been slightly influenced with the fact that I was supposed to be writing an essay on the 18th Century at the time.) Anyway, because of this I decided it would be a great idea to embroider excerpts from the Bayeux Tapestry on to a dress. (If anyone is wondering, the Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidery, not a tapestry.) This project would also give me an endless supply of hand sewing to do, an occupation I pine after when I don’t have any.

The base dress is made from McCall’s 3129, which is quickly become my standard base pattern. It closes with the best invisible zip I’ve done yet – I didn’t need to redo any of it. The easy-to-embroider fabric was another great find at Patchwork on Parker in Cootamundra. I didn’t try to match the embroidery floss colour perfectly to the actual tapestry (and frankly, when you’re working with photos and photos of photos – colour accuracy pretty much goes out the window anyway). Instead I found out what the colours were by name, and then found a collection that looked good together.

The pale yellow is perhaps a bit too close to the fabric colour 

To transfer the design on to the dress, I printed out pictures in the size I wanted and traced the outline in dark pen. I then placed the tracings over the inside of the dress until I was happy with the arrangement and then traced them. I work on a glass top table with a lamp underneath to shine the designs outlines through the fabric for tracing. I have found that this process is better at night when the only light source is the lamp.

 The figures are outlined in stem stitch (which I no longer forget how to do in the middle of a row) and filled in with Bayeux stitch. Bayeux stitch is the stitch that was used on the original tapestry. It conserves thread as much as possible and fills in spaces very quickly.

I expect that this project will take a while (read: years).  I am not constantly embroidering but I am happy with my progress after a month.

May I present the first figure, finished:

There is a painfully detailed set of progress photos under the cut, that I expect I am the only person who will care about.

Hollywood Glamour

One of my friends had a ‘Hollywood Glamour’ themed 21st birthday party last year. This seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to make this dress, for which I had been making vague plans ever since seeing it in High Style. Then I discovered it was worn by Ava Gardner in The Barefoot Contessa, in which she played an actress – how appropriate! I decided not to to make an exact copy as I don’t particularly like strapless sweetheart necklines and that decision also gave me a lot more freedom reinterpret other elements, such as the appliqués and the colour.  As it turned out I couldn’t find the fabric in light pink and I very much like the colour of the fabric I found.

This is the inspiration dress, held by the The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The dress is made from nine metres of poly-taffeta and three metres of velvet. I had never worked with real velvet before and it took me a while to get used to how it pushes away when sewing a seam, but the good quality just adds so much class to the outfit. The lace appliqués were cut from a lace fabric. It was the sort of fabric that, at $70 per metre, makes either a very expensive dress or in small amounts, very cheap trim – 20cm gave me 18 lovely appliqués at less than a dollar each.

 (the fabric on the ironing board is a sleeve)

To make the dress I adapted Vogue 2903 (a vintage 50s pattern) and used Simplicity 2442  as the basis for the halter. The dress closes with an invisible zip at centre back and the halter just goes over my head. The bolero was also adapted from Simplicity 2442. I cut the mock-up with a lot of extra fabric around the collar and cut it back until it looked how I wanted. I then forgot to interface the collar, but the fabric works well enough without it. For the sleeves I cut the shape of a sleeve top into a sheet, sewed it into the mock-up, put the mock-up on my dress form and cut the rest of the material to the desired shape.

The sleeve pattern, with an iPhone for scale (it’s huge)

 I free-handed the shape for the velvet appliqués and, after ironing them on, machine satin-stitched around them. The lace appliqués were also first affixed by an iron-on adhesive and then secured by hand. They took around two hours each, because I had to be very careful to sew through the loops of the lace weave.

In the grand tradition of costuming, the dress was still being sewn right to the last minute and I wore it to the party with the sleeve linings safety-pinned in, one of the appliqués only ironed on and not sewn and no appliqué on the front bodice. But it was still very well received and I loved wearing it.

Look! I made something neat on the inside.

I did the velvet on the bodice appliqué differently from the ones on the bolero. I satin-stitched the velvet to a separate piece of taffeta which I hand-sewed to the bodice preventing any misshaping and keeping the inside cleaner. The bodice appliqués are all beaded and sequined which looks really nice (I didn’t have time to even consider beading on the bolero) and was so much fun that I spent the rest of the week wishing I had more to do.

I entered this dress in the Canberra Show. I won first place in my section and reserve champion (for non-professional entrants with more than 2 years experience).

I am incredibly happy with this outfit. It’s one of the best quality pieces I’ve made and it was really nice to have a dress that I’d long admired, but had no particular expectations that it would become a reality.

 (It's a great dress for pretending to be a helicopter)