(courtesy of trulyvictorian.com)
And I immediately thought of this fabric my friend Jacky brought me back from Taiwan:
Pretty, innit?
You see where this is going. Clearly, I need to make a corset-tailcoat out of this totally kickass fabric. Unfortunately, I only have four yards of it, and it's thirty inches wide - this is going to involve some magic. I think I'll fill the pleats in the back with a black satin, and make elbow-length sleeves with three-inch-wide black satin cuffs attached to the bottom of those (sleeves take up far more fabric than you'd expect).
The danger, see, is that this will end up looking like a pimp coat - the pattern on the fabric is strong enough that this could happen, and that's really not the look I'm going for - this is the other reason I'm going to do these black accents. So I'm going to make the low-neckline version, so as to avoid having Vast Tracts of Fabric, with a line of cute little round black buttons down the front.
However, this causes some issues with the collar. This pattern has both a mandarin collar option (meant to go with the high-neckline version) and a half-collar (basically, the mandarin collar, but only half of it - it goes around the back and stops roughly below your ears). The half-collar is nominally what you're supposed to use with the low-neckline version... but it looks really absurd. I love the way the collar looks in the back, though. So my friend Kim had this brilliant idea: I should do the full mandarin collar, on the low-neckline version. Basically, a built-in choker. I think it'll look really nice.
Victorian outfits, of course, have one more complication: you've gotta have the right underwear. In this case, a corset and a bustle and possibly petticoats. And I'd like to have a skirt to go with it. So I'm going to try out a few other Truly Victorian patterns while I'm at it:
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/101.html
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/170.html
The Silverado corset from this one
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/lm100.html
And this skirt.
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/290.html
Patterns and bustle wire should be getting here any day now. I'll keep you posted. (Is anyone actually reading this, anyway?)
You see where this is going. Clearly, I need to make a corset-tailcoat out of this totally kickass fabric. Unfortunately, I only have four yards of it, and it's thirty inches wide - this is going to involve some magic. I think I'll fill the pleats in the back with a black satin, and make elbow-length sleeves with three-inch-wide black satin cuffs attached to the bottom of those (sleeves take up far more fabric than you'd expect).
The danger, see, is that this will end up looking like a pimp coat - the pattern on the fabric is strong enough that this could happen, and that's really not the look I'm going for - this is the other reason I'm going to do these black accents. So I'm going to make the low-neckline version, so as to avoid having Vast Tracts of Fabric, with a line of cute little round black buttons down the front.
However, this causes some issues with the collar. This pattern has both a mandarin collar option (meant to go with the high-neckline version) and a half-collar (basically, the mandarin collar, but only half of it - it goes around the back and stops roughly below your ears). The half-collar is nominally what you're supposed to use with the low-neckline version... but it looks really absurd. I love the way the collar looks in the back, though. So my friend Kim had this brilliant idea: I should do the full mandarin collar, on the low-neckline version. Basically, a built-in choker. I think it'll look really nice.
Victorian outfits, of course, have one more complication: you've gotta have the right underwear. In this case, a corset and a bustle and possibly petticoats. And I'd like to have a skirt to go with it. So I'm going to try out a few other Truly Victorian patterns while I'm at it:
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/101.html
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/170.html
The Silverado corset from this onehttp://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/lm100.html
And this skirt.
http://trulyvictorian.com/catalog/290.html
Patterns and bustle wire should be getting here any day now. I'll keep you posted. (Is anyone actually reading this, anyway?)
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