Costumes, oh my...

One of my greatest get-aways of everyday life is the Elf Fantasy Fair, a fantasy fair, held twice a year now, where most visitors go dressed up like well... anything remotely fantasy.
I've been... seven or eight times now, everything dressed up differently, although de last time was just an adjustment of the one before.

But since I'm planning on keeping that tradition, I want to create a new costume for the next fair in april. Time enough, you think? I say: try it when you attend my school (and with my time management skills... I seriously have to work on that).

Anyway, I've come up with, by now, three ideas, all of which are less time consuming than the Victorian dress I really, really want to make (I've practically everything to start that project, except the previous mentioned time...)

So, I've three rather doable ideas:
First: finally dress up like the avatars I've been using on various forums, an Egyptian princess.
I've figured out I could fabricate the expensive gold jewellery for a low butget, with craft foam (haven't tried it yet, but here's a good tutorial for an elfen armour, where they made a very good gold-impression).
The dress itself should not be a bigger problem that I make of it, but I'm afraid it'll take too much time to make the jewellery.

Second: An octopus, where the eight arms will be my skirt. On top I'll wear one of my corsets.
I got the idea when I saw this picture by Viona:

Although my idea is to give it longer arms, loosely falling down.

Third: This is an idea I had earlier, to go like a messed up Lady Justice, with her hair wild, her sword clothes covered in blood, her scale bending to one side, bloody tears coming form underneath her blindfold and maybe chains around her.
Hmmm... writing it down make it seem like a political statement...
Anyway, the costume plan is to make it out of several rectangles of cloth, draped around me, inspired by the ancient Greek costume, although I'm not sure how historically accurate.
A scale should be easily made, since it doesn't have to be precise, the sword can be my LARP-sword, cloth I've enough. Maybe I could make an evil version, who's dressed in black...

Anyway, I'm still thinking about it. I'll let you know when I've made a decision. I've you got suggestions, feel free to share them with me. ;)

Dressed for a (wedding)party

My sister-in-law send me some pictures of her wedding dress.


The dress was inspired by the Victorian fashion.
I made the jacket and most of the skirt. Both where inspired by this dress.
The border of the jacket is decorated with a fluffy feathery thing. I think I will still find these feathers everywhere when I move out of my studio (I even found them in my refrigerator...).

Here's the top I didn't make ;) I think it's lovely. It's the same fabric as the rest of the dress, covered with an embroidered tule. The lacing at the back is pure decoration, a zipper is hidden in the side seam.

One last picture, of me (in my red dress) helping the bride dressing up:
I guess the photographer they hired will have some nice pictures of the happy couple, but I haven't seen them yet, so maybe later.

My red dress

Pfoe! I've been very busy the past weeks, finishing everything in time for the wedding. But I made it. (It's a miracle!)

For my dress is used the pattern of the left dress. It's a pattern of a Knip (Dutch pattern magazine, like Burda) of 1974.
The fabric I used was a rather thick synthetic, from a second-hand dress. (My mom knew what it was called... I'll come back to that.)
I also wanted to reuse the beads, that where used as the original decoration, but in the end I decided they looked too cheap.
But looking at my dress, without any decoration, I found it was too plain.
So, how to decorate? By then, I had only a few days left until the wedding!
Well, that should be enough to sew a ribbon on a dress, right?
When I had time to shop for the ribbon, it was one day before the wedding, and as always, when time runs out, I could not find what I was looking for...




What I find, however, where very fine ribbons, in two shades of grey. I had decided to combine the red dress with grey, so I hoped I could use these as a decoration.
I bought 10 meters of both colours. That would be enough to... braid it.
I made the ribbons into a four strand brand. But the band was still very fine. Four of these bands next to each other, however, gave a very nice effect.
To keep these bands in place, I ironed them on a strip of interfacing and made a sort of belt from it.
As a fastener, I made a fabric-covered button. For the fabric I used some leftovers of the ribbons and weaved it.
The last photo shows a close-up from the belt. I really like the result. It's a nice idea to use for more accessories.


I don't have any pictures to show of the wedding-dress. Hopefully they follow soon!

Blog the first

So here it is, my first blog. Hopefully the first of many.
I love working with textile, for clothes, or decorating it with stitches. And so, like many before me have done I put them on internet for all to see. Hopefully I will inspire people who equally inspire me with their blogs.

At this moment I'm helping my sister-in-law-to-be with her wedding dress (of which I can't show any pictures until after the wedding) and a dress for myself for the same occasion (of which I don't have any pictures to show).
Of the latter I can, however, tell you what the plan is.

I've bought a lovely red (as in red-red) fabric - in dress shape - at a second hand store (can you believe it: Antwerp has a very famous fashion school, but I'm unable to find any large textile stores in the area... If anybody knows where they are, please tell me). It had some decoration with beads I'm going to re-use.
I used the long skirt for... well, shorter skirt, and to cut out the new top part. For that I used a pattern of a 1973 summer-dress.
Right now it's all in pieces, so I'm a little anxious to see if it's going to look all right, but I'll keep you posted on that.