"Nothing is true"

My big project for the summer is to make three Assassin’s Creed costumes. I sometimes sew presents for my cousin and this was his choice. As I have considered making one for myself, and every-so-often my dad mentions that he would like one, I decided that if I was going to make one assassin costume I may as well make three.

Left to right: Assassin’s Creed II, Brotherhood, Revelations.

Of course, we have all chosen outfits from different games – making the same outfit three times would be far too straight forward. I have chosen the outfit from Assassin’s Creed II, my dad’s will be from Brotherhood and my cousin’s from Revelations. As much as I can I will try to make them historically accurate, but for the most part the game designs just aren’t true to history and it is more important to me that my costumes be screen accurate.

The outfits are all made of many layers so I needed to carefully analyse the illustrations to work out how many individual garments I would need and which pieces would be sewn to where.

The AC II outfit has a shirt and tunic. The tunic will have a waist seam (to be hidden by the sash) to which all the skirt layers will be sewn. It has two layers of sleeve caps – one slashed and one not.  It took me a while to work out how the various layers worked to get two collars and a hood. I concluded that the hood is a separate piece which is buttoned on under the collar.

The hood looks like a separate piece from the back.

The other two outfits were busier visually so I did the analyses by tracing over pictures in Gimp. The images I used are these screenshots from the game. I also referenced some promotional images. The costumes in the promotional material are not entirely true to what appears in the game which allowed me a bit of choice about how to do things. Having a choice is both helpful and unhelpful.

The Brotherhood outfit has a shirt, a jerkin and a doublet. It has a separate hood as well.

The bottom row is all the jerkin.

The Revelations outfit has a jerkin and doublet but no shirt. Really there probably would have been a shirt worn with it but there isn’t one visible and I don’t need another thing to make and my cousin doesn’t need another layer to wear on a hot day.

The green layer is the doublet, the other pieces are all parts of the jerkin. The red layer is beneath the purple layer in the front and on top of the purple layer in the back.

I suspect I am not using true meanings of ‘doublet’ and ‘jerkin’, but for this project I have assigned them to have the meanings: doublet - ‘sleeveless skirtless outer layer’ and jerkin - ‘sleeved, skirted underlayer’, so I can keep everything straight in my head. At this point I am not planning to make any of the metal or leather pieces.

Assassin’s Creed belongs to Ubisoft.

I can wear evening dresses all day if I want to

As it’s now the season for wearing summer dresses, I thought I would blog about some. I have made a series of dresses from the pattern for a 1929-30 Vionnet evening dress on page 78 in Patterns of Fashion 2. When scaling the pattern I made it slightly more slimline than the original because the original was sheer and worn belted over a petticoat, whereas mine would only be one layer.

It’s a weird dress to make. I’ve found it easiest to describe the skirt as an 8-sided square, although four of the sides are slightly longer than the other four.  The bodice side seams are only about 3.5” long.  This was the first pattern I started hand-hemming, because the satins would look awful otherwise. By the end of it I was very experienced, as each dress has around 10 metres of hem.

I can't decide whether this reminds me more of an octopus or a starfish...

At the beginning it was difficult to work out where all the skirt pieces fitted together and how they fitted onto the bodice. I have now made five versions of this dress.  The first time round I sewed all the skirt pieces together, then made the bodice, and then tried to combine the two. It was a pain to sew all those angles into each other and the resultant seams don’t sit well. In the later versions I started by attaching each skirt piece separately onto its respective bodice piece then sewing the completed dress front to the completed dress back.  This worked much better.

 My first version of this dress was made from a satin fabric with a variegated turquoise and mauve diagonal pattern. I had been looking for a bright print satin but could find  none, so this was a compromise.  I wore it to my friend’s 16th birthday supper.  

The bias-cut bodice is kind of odd to wear – you move your shoulder and the fabric pulls on your opposite hip.

I never quite understood what the pattern intended for the shoulder drapes so I made my own drapes by cutting out spirals of fabric using pinking shears;  I then sewed the spirals on at the shoulders. I also did this for the next two versions of this dress I made. These were gifts for my cousins.  To make their dresses I needed to adjust the original pattern not just for size but also for dimension and body shape. Because the girls live interstate, I made a variety of mock-up bodices that I posted to them so they could each pick the best fit.

My school friends decided to arrange a summer picnic at the end of the year I was making these dresses. The dress code was ‘dresses or button-shirts’.  I could have re-worn the dress from the 16th birthday but, even though it was summer, the Canberra weather was still a bit too cool for that. So, obviously, I needed a new dress.

Spot the camouflaged bolero.

I found some lovely I-have-no-idea-what-it-is fabric at Spotlight. It had a bright and blocky pattern and would be warmer than the satin. On the day before the picnic I made myself a second dress using this pattern and, to go with it, I made a bolero from Style 2302.

Sourced from my mother’s pattern stash.

On the morning of the picnic I machine-hemmed the eight-sided skirt and trimmed a straw hat to match (which has since been untrimmed). I was one of the few at the picnic who had decided to brave the weather in a dress; however I learnt the hard way that this skirt is difficult to control in the wind.

Or, alternatively, that it spins well.

I had wanted a bright print satin for this dress when I had made my first one so I was never entirely happy with the variegated fabric, so when I found some blue and green patterned satin it seemed like a good reason to make another one.  This time I added sleeves.

The sleeves are squares of fabric with the armhole shape cut out diagonally below centre.

All of the dresses have different skirt length and slightly different necklines. When cutting the pattern I initially cut the fabric straight along the shoulder seam line and then chose the neckline afterwards and shaped it while trying it on.

I don’t think I cut this neckline at all.

My first attempt at this dress is now a summer house dress. Because I can wear a satin 1930s Vionnet evening dress around the house during the day if I want to!

A quick project

Tunics form a staple part of my wardrobe. I’ve made several, all slightly different styles from A-line to fitted crossover.

While working on an outfit that required careful planning, patterning and execution (as-yet-unblogged) I decided I wanted to make something that would be finished quickly.

I had been brainstorming tunic designs, so I picked one and made up a pattern.

The one on the right.

The pattern was based on a pattern based on a pattern. (It started out as – but no longer resembles – McCall’s 3129.)  One of the changes was to make the side front and side back go up to the shoulder seam, rather than into the armhole.

Because this was to be a ‘quick project’ I didn’t make a muslin. I knew the top pattern fitted me so I figured it would be okay. It did fit, but was much less fitted than I wanted, so I had to take in all the seams to reduce it down to the fit I wanted.

I cut each front piece wide and fitted the angles of the crossover by hand. As this required very precise placing I basted the edges very close to the fold before cutting, neatening and hemming. I liked the look of the basting so much I kept it in.

The fabric is a curtain offcut that was in my stash. It has a lovely woven texture. The ribbons are also from the stash, which is why the ones on the inside don’t match and are odd lengths. I am considering buying some more of the purple ribbon and having another tie halfway up the front as it can gape a little.

The tunic closes with ribbon ties (because zips haven’t been invented yet).

This tunic was made to be a practical and versatile piece in my wardrobe so it can be worn with many things: pants, skirt, corset, short sleeves, long sleeves.

1901 reception gown

This dress is a reproduction of a reception gown that was worn in a 1901 production of Sweet and Twenty. I found it in Patterns of Fashion 2 (page 50) shortly after I started costuming. I was not very experienced at this stage but I am a great believer in making something you really want rather than something more achievable just for the sake of it.

Late night ‘It’s Finished!’ photo.

I don’t really care for the pigeon fronted silhouette and styles of the first decade of the 20th Century so I decided to make some slight changes to the design: I reduced the fullness of the bodice and left out some pattern pieces that I couldn’t work out where they went. I also decided not to make underpinnings as I didn’t expect to be returning to this era again.

I bought the satin for the dress on ebay. It has a nice feel and drape, but it frayed terribly and was flawed in some places. I had to use fray-stoppa on many of the seams which made them uncomfortable and stiff and many of the seams have frayed apart anyway.

Much sadness...

I couldn’t find any soft dotted netting so I used a striped chiffon instead. The white netting at the neckline is made from the leftover fabric from my mother’s wedding veil. The cream ribbons for the ribbon embroidery were a more successful ebay purchase – it was much cheaper than if I’d bought it in a shop even though I got way more than I needed, and the leftovers continue to prove useful.

In total there are about 40 metres of ribbon handsewn to the dress. I transferred the design to the fabric by cutting the repeat out of an overhead transparency and then sponging loose powder makeup over it.

The dress is in three pieces: the bodice, a satin underskirt and the sheer overskirt. I was trying to be historical in the construction where I could, but I didn’t know a lot, nor did I have much information to work with, so it was largely made up. 

From patterning to finish took six weeks over the summer holidays when I was 16. I finished it the night before I started college (that’s the last two years of high school in Canberra). I didn’t get an opportunity to wear it until two years later at my year 12 formal. I was appropriately dressed to receive ‘the anachronistic award’.

Photo by Eric Piris.

I did several test runs of Edwardian hairstyles with hairdressers, but they proved most unsuccessful. In the end I got my mum to do it, based on this tutorial from Wildilocks. She did a wonderful job.

With my dad in the father-daughter dance at the graduation dinner.

I entered this dress in the Canberra show and won student champion. I really want to wear it again but it’s a bit too fancy for anywhere I usually go. 

More ubiquity – the walkaway dress

When I saw Butterick B4790 in the pattern book it called to me.

This is a reprinted 50s pattern of a wrap dress that is shaped like a pencil skirt at the front and like a circle skirt at the back.

From a perusal of vintage sewing blogs I discovered that this pattern had been made by just about everyone and was known as the ‘walkaway dress’ because you could "start it after breakfast... walk away in it for luncheon!" I decided on a print and plain combination of cottons for mine.

I lined the front, partly because I was afraid the light fabric would be see-through and partly in an attempt to prevent the dress being dragged backwards by the weight of the circle skirt.

Apart from the hems all the edges are bound – by machine, I had not yet discovered the joys of hand sewing.

 I had planned for this dress to be part of my everyday wardrobe, but my experience of wearing it is that it is a bit awkward. The front skirt catches on things (eg the overskirt, my knees, itself) and bunches up so I am constantly having to smooth it down. The dress requires a petticoat because the edges of the front skirt sometimes creep forward from behind my legs. The circle skirt has a tendency to overlap weirdly in the centre front which loses the pencil skirt/circle skirt effect (although this may be a result of my binding technique).

Front and back closures.

It’s a shame that it is so awkward to wear, as it really is a lovely dress. However, it still serves well as a costume for 1950s themed parties.

I can’t call it historical ‘cos my mum was in high school then

When I added -isms: understanding fashion to my sewing library there was one dress in particular that caught my eye. It was a 1972 gown designed by Bill Gibb and worn by the singer Sandie Shaw (who, I’m afraid, I’d never heard of) and used in the book as an example of ‘World Clothing’.

Inspiration dress at the V&A

The original design is described as incorporating influences from medieval dress, folk costumes and the hippy movement. When I was working out how I would interpret this design I decided that I wanted to avoid the earthy colours of the original and instead juxtapose the hippy design with more distinct/futuristic/tech-society colours: black and white with red highlights.

I still wanted to have a pair of busy dark/light prints and a box-patterned trim

We scoured the local quilting shops for coordinating prints and eventually found a set that went together nicely. I omitted the dangly embroideries on the sleeves and bodice of the original dress. For the front of my dress I made a slashed feature panel.

I achieved this look by alternating layers of black and white fabric; sewing lots of parallel lines across them and then cutting all but the bottom layer of fabric in between the stitching.

For some reason I didn’t find any information for this dress online when I was making it. Things I didn’t know included: there are two lines of boxes down the front of the skirt (I don’t think I had enough fabric for that), the original dress is lined and it closes with a back zip.

I’m pretty sure my mum told me to put a zip in it and I refused (“zips haven’t been invented yet” will be what I scribble on walls should I ever go mad) and my decision has resulted in a dress that is a bit looser than it might otherwise have been and is difficult to get on and off (especially at the mid sleeve gather-point – although the zip wouldn’t have changed that).  On the bright side, at least the back isn’t broken up by an ugly zip – because I didn’t know about invisible zippers then. (There are 3 types of zip in the world – featured, invisible and ugly.)

I’m not sure why my waistline ended up being so much lower than the original – it’s something I only noticed when writing this post.

About the time I made this dress I was becoming dissatisfied with the quality of my sewing. I had been using many shortcuts, so for this dress I decided to do things properly. This was the first piece for which I ironed out the seams during construction and finished each edge separately. It was a big improvement, but looking at it now it is still quite rough in places.

Notice how carefully the box is matched at the seam and how neatly the stitching lines fit between the print and the edge of the fold.

I can’t find the pattern I made but my recollection is that it was adapted from a vest pattern combined with many rectangles. Maybe I only used measurements for the rectangles and the reason I can’t find a pattern is that one never existed.