Yet another new project!

What's that? I'm supposed to finish what I start before picking up something new? Naaah! :D

This new one is for a larp outfit and will be one of the more ambitions things I've done in a while, as far as exploring a new era of fashion, new techniques and new types of accessories goes.

The new era
I was given a suggestion of aiming towards roughly the 1930's. I'll admit that most of my research has landed a decade or two earlier than that, but I imagine that the work uniform of a maid wasn't something that changed along with fashion very easily and it might look more or less the same in the 30's as it did in the 20's.

In short, it should consist of a black dress (possibly with some details of white lace, such as the collar) and on top of that a white apron and a small white headgear, either a cap or one of those lacy headbands.

For the black dress, I'm going to cheat and go for a long black skirt and a dark grey shirt. The main reason for this is simply that I already own them and my budget is somewhat limited, so I won't be making an entirely new dress when I won't have to.

Instead, I will put my efforts into making the apron and headgear nice, since they should attract the most attention anyway. I spent quite some time researching different models of aprons, and in the end I landed at this one as my favourit:

(Picture shamelessly stolen from http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/liners/titanic/survivorsapron.aspx )

Granted, this one is from 1912, but I refer to my argument above about why that's probably okay. I like the way the top part of the apron covers enough of the chest, back and shoulders to almost give the impression of being a white dress and the lace details are beautiful but not over the top.

(Again, from http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/liners/titanic/survivorsapron.aspx )

Another source of inspiration is the maid uniforms seen in the tv show Downton Abbey. The model is basically the same, only the trim differs.

I know that I have some old lace lying around that I bought for another project but never used. As far as I can tell, it's vintage and handmade, which is a neat bonus. It was also incredibly cheap, so I won't feel too bad about what I'm going to do to it next...


The new techniques
Not only will the costume look like a maid's uniform from the early 20th century. It will also have to look like the person wearing it has worn it since back then, while working and not taking particularily good care of it. There will have to be discolouration, old stains, wear and tear, hastily mended rips and plenty of blood stains (did I mention she's the semi-immortal servant of a slightly demented vampire count?).

I've never done anything like this before, but I think it will be a lot of fun! I've spent some time researching how to distress costumes in a good looking and not too impractical way (the ideal one of course being to simply use them until they are suitable worn out, but most of us won't have the time to do that.)

There are plenty of different ways to distress outfits, and most of the places I've found repeat them in one way or another. This page sums up most of them pretty well. I have a feeling it will be difficult to first spend time making a nice looking garment, only to proceed and start ripping and staining and ruining it, but the end result should be nice!

Blood stains turned out to be trickier. My first searches mostly gave me advice along the line of "I'm really cheap and in a hurry and want to make a halloween outfit". That is; blood stains that looked like fresh blood and probably not very realistic at that either. What I wanted was dried in blood, but preferrably permanent so that I won't have to worry about ruining it if it should get wet, or staining other clothes. I altered my search slightly, adding things about wanting it to be old blood and permanent. What do I get? Pages upon pages of stain removal advice. Argh!

At this point, I think my best bet will be to go for a mixture of red food dye and soy sauce, which I will then attempt to wash out. Hopefully this should leave reddish brown stains. (I will of course try this on some scrap fabric first) Then for the slightly fresher and not yet washed out, but still aged and dry, stains, I might just fall back on painting them on with acrylic paint. Not ideal, but it's my best idea so far. Got a better one? Do tell me!

New accessories
I'm buying a wig.

I've never bought a wig before. Actually, I've never even worn one. But it seems like fun. And a good way to alter your looks a lot. That in combination with wearing contacts, which I almost never do, should make me look a lot different in this costume.

Right now, I'm looking at Tradera (swedish ebay, kinda) for cheap wigs. I know that cheap wigs are probably bad wigs, but I don't really feel I can pay for an expensive good wig now that it's just my first time and little more than a fun experiment. If I like it, that can come later.

Since I know the selection won't be too big, I've kept my preferences rather wide. I want the hair to be dark, since I've always wanted dark hair irl, but never dared dye it. I think I'll avoid the completely black ones, I imagine they'll look more fake than a dark brown one. I want it long, mostly since I miss having long hair myself (I'm saving it, but at this rate it will be a few years before it's at the length I want), and I think I'll go for slightly wave rather than straight, again in the hope of looking slightly less awfully fake.

I've got my eyes on one wig that'll be sold tonight and seems promising as far as both looks and price goes. Once I have it and it's arrived, there will be a new post with pictures!

In the end, this is the concept sketch I arrived at:

I'm not 100% sure that's exactly how I'll place the trim, I'll most likely improvise that as I go and when I know just how much lace I have access to. I haven't decided what kind of headgear to make. The lacy headbands seem the most common, but in my mind that have too much of a gothic lolita/french maid halloween outfit wibe. For this reason, I'm leaning towards a mob cap style thing, possibly decorated with lace as well. This might also be helpful if the wig I end up with is ugly. It'll probably be best to wait until I have the wig to decide.

The joy of embroidery hoops

I have no idea why I never bought myself an embroidery hoop earlier. Working with it is wonderful! This makes me feel even more enthusiastic for future embroidery work. Making the Police Telephone sign has been a lot of fun, especially copying the lovely font of the top half of it. The lower part has a simpler font, without serifs and varying line thicknesses. To my surprise, the simpler font turned out to be the harder one to get to look good. With no frills and details, it's even more important to not have slanted lines that should have been straight and the letters the exact same size.

Still, making the sign has been a joy and I'm really pleased with the results so far.

Next up will be the little sign on the door, the one so many people seem to forget that it even exists. This one:

This will be an interesting challenge too. I'm not sure wether to work in black on white fabric, in white on black or do it with both black and white thread on blue fabric. Those tiny lions and unicorns will be fun to figure out! For those alone, I'm leaning towards white on black rather than the opposite.

Besides embroidery, I have also bought the fabric I'll use for the petticoat that will go with the dress, as well as a few meters of tardis blue satin ribbon, which will go on the sleeves and possibly the collar of the white shirt I'll wear under the dress. But back to the petticoat! Originally, I was thinking white for it. Then I saw this... 

How could I resist? I'm sorely tempted to use part of it to make a small hat veil as well. I imagine it'd look rather nice. It'd be a nice way to hint towards the shiny gold eyes people who interact with the heart of the tardis get. By all logic, the tardis itself if anthropomorphed would have them as well, but the real thing is kinda hard to do without CGI. :)

The Tardis in one piece

I've finally gotten the main part of the Tardis dress put together and fitted properly. It ended up being a bit too long, considering that I want to add a fairly wide ruffle at the bottom. But it will need trimming in order to make it even anyway, so I'll just cut away a bit extra.

I do apologise for the dreadfully flat and boring presentation of the dress. I do wish I had one of those fancy mannequins to display it on. (Would make fitting so much easier as well!) In the future, I will attempt to have photos of me wearing it instead.

Next up is mapping out where and how to attach the embellishments that will make it look properly like a Tardis. I've been debating with myself on how to do the panels best. The first one was wether to make panels, or strips of fabrics for the space inbetween the panels. The most accurate way would be strips of fabric, seeing how the panels on the Tardis are sunk in, not standing out. On the other hand, this is not a square shape, but a fitted dress. Doing this would basically mean sewing a second dress, cutting out holes for the panels and sewing them together. That does seem a little over the top! Instead, I'll cut the squares for the panels, and attach them to the dress. The one exception will be a strip down the middle front, which will help hide the zipper.

The next thing to decide was the shape of the panels. Sqaures, obviously. But the dress gets wider at the bottom than the top. Should I make the squares like that as well? In the end I decided not to, it might look too strange. There will be panels along the front and back, and they will be straight. (One might also add panels on the sides, seeing how the dress is probably wide enough for them to fit... But that might also look weird. I'll attach the front and back panels first, and then decide)

After some measuring, I've decided that 24x15cm(9,44x5,9inches) panels should be a good size. This in turn means that the "free for public use" sign must be even a bit more smaller. I downloaded a large one and put it in photoshop, shrinking it down to a small enough size. This picture I will then print, and use as a guide for when I'm embroidering the sign that goes on the dress.

One last issue remains this time. The black "police box" sign. Originally I was envisioning another pattern, one that closes in the back. That one would have enabled me to have the sign just attached across the front of the dress. Now I have the zipper in the front instead, and that won't work. I will have to devise another way to put the black sign in the dress. I've seen people who make a choker necklace or a scarf out of it, rather than having it attached to the dress itself, maybe that will be a good option for me as well. I will have to think about it. Luckily, it won't be needed in quite a while yet, there's still many other things to do.