Costume College, pt. 2

On Friday I wore my Roman garb, which was oh so comfy.  Having watched several of Janet Stephens' videos on Roman hairdressing, I was left with the impression that doing it properly would require a second person, which I did not have.  (I had tried the Aphrodite knot, which could be done solo, and it looked stupid on me so clearly I was not doing it correctly.)  So I winged it - did my hair into eight braids and criss-crossed them on the back of my head.  No pics; no ideas if it looked okay or not.  I did get a couple questions about what era I was dressed as - most guesses were Viking.  Alas.

Saturday I wore the beaded refashion dress, which I'll go over in another post, and on Sunday I wore this:

The shoes are from Clark's, many years ago, and are probably not quite right for the decade, but they're comfy and I already had them and they're close enough.  I made the dress following the classic "one hour dress" pattern, which is a misnomer.  Underneath, I wore this:

The linen chemise is also made using that same pattern, and the corset (because women, especially us stout ones) did not just give up their corsets in the 1920s!) I sized up and adapted from Norah Waugh's book Corsets and Crinolines.  It's a single-layer corset, more like a binder really, with spiral steel in the seams.  I got the rainbow garter clips and the back-seam nylons both from Sock Dreams.

I added a little bit of an accent on the sides to cover the gathers.  And to make that navy blue neck tie look less out of place.

And some almost invisible details... there's three tucks on each sleeve because I thought that would be fun.  Not sure if you can tell in any of these pictures, but there are threads of silver (probably mylar?) running through the otherwise 100% linen of the dress, adding just a little sparkle.

And on the inside of those gathers shown up above, I wrapped a strip of bias tape around the exposed raw edge.  Because linen does like to fray!  And I finished each seam edge with rayon seam binding.  Because what use is it, making a dress, only to have it fray to uselessness after five or ten washes?