A Look at an Edwardian Lingerie Dress and Some Other Random Pictures

I've been out of the sewing room for over five days, and boy does it feel weird! I never thought sewing would be such a big part of my life; I'm pretty sure the last time I did an activity almost every day for such a long period of time was play piano, and that was waaaaay back in high school. The reasons for the sewing hiatus were mostly good ones, though: my dear friends Ryan and Jeanine, of our-Hunger-Games-photo-shoot-fame, got married on Saturday. I must say, I don't think I've teared up so many times in one day for a very long time -- all the speeches were poignant and heartfelt without being too sappy, and maybe it's the teacher in me, but I just don't have a lot of patience for drawn-out talking without a clear point, so these toasts were all really excellent. Anyway, since this was our very own fake Katpee getting married, I went so far as to draw them a personalized card, instead of just picking up some generic greeting card from Target.

The inside of the card says "Haymitch applauds your kiss and finds it worthy of the sponsors' parachutes. Happy Hunger Games Wedding!" I know, teens killing each other is a terrible theme for a wedding card. So sue me.

Besides the wedding, I've also been having some bizarre pain/extreme soreness in my dominant (right) shoulder, so I've been doing a lot of sitting around on the couch reading the LOTR Appendices instead of wrestling with the iron and hand-cranking through the multi-layered parts of my latest sewing project. Since I don't have any of my sewing to show, have some photos of an authentic Edwardian-ish-era lingerie dress with lots of pintucks and lace insertion! I took these at an antique mall in historic Orange, where I also found some other sewing goodies that I'll be sharing later.

Apologies about the lighting and quality...I was using my iPhone in a basement.

Pintucks in the skirt portion.

Closeup of the lace chevrons and the pintucks.

With flash, but you can see how silky the material was and the sleeve cuff's details.

I'm hoping to get my hands on a nice blouse pattern from the VPLL 1912 project so that I can work on my own lace-inserting and pintucking, but that's going to need to wait for after this weekend's wedding and the Ren Faire the following weekend. And just in case you're wondering, I wore my not-so-little LBD to the wedding this past weekend, but managed to get no good pictures of me wearing it. So instead, have a picture of me at IKEA wearing my IKEA hippos dress. I was a little surprised that no one said anything about my dress; I think I felt slightly (and inexplicably) offended that nobody, not even the employees, found it comment-worthy that I was wearing a dress sprinkled with extremely IKEA-y hippos all over it, in IKEA.  Come on, people, I'm a walking advertisement for your textiles section! 

It was actually my husband's suggestion that I take a picture with this couch. People, this is why I love that man.

Asking for a Favor!

Sooooo...I feel a little silly asking this (you can tell how silly I feel by how many o's I just typed), but I entered my Girl on Fire dress in Whimsic Alley's costume contest (they're an awesome store in LA that specializes in Harry Potter fandom gear, and have been getting into Hunger Games fan stuff too). If you liked my dress and you do this whole Facebook thing, I would really appreciate it if you could "like" my photo. That is, if you actually like it better than the other costumes. Sometimes I feel bad when people ask me to vote for them in something, but then I like somebody else's entry more; I am stating officially that you should feel free to not just blindly vote for me, but for the best costume.

Click here to vote on my dress!

From Orange Turtle Photography's shoot.

And here's where I get even more sheepish: I'm not actually sure what this is a contest for, as in I don't know what the prize is. Maybe it will be a sad little $5 gift card to their store, maybe it will be bread from the Mellark Bakery for life -- who knows? But at any rate, I would be grateful if you took the time to vote. And I won't go so far as to say "May the odds be ever in my favor!" Oh wait, I just did.

My Girl on Fire Dress from the Hunger Games

What you can't tell from this picture is that it's 40 degrees, raining about five feet away, and ultra windy (okay maybe you can tell it's windy). And poor Jeanine was freezing in this flimsy little chiffon confection. Photo from Orange Turtle.

As I mentioned yesterday, I got to play Cinna and do the styling for a recent Hunger Games-inspired photoshoot with Orange Turtle Photography. Although it was fun to decide on the looks for Reaping Day and the Arena, my real pièce de résistance was the Girl on Fire dress that our Katniss wore for The Capitol.

When I first read the books by Suzanne Collins, one thing that I immediately noticed was the importance of clothing/fashion in the world of Panem, especially in the Capitol. From Prim's ducktailed shirt to the historically awful District 12 chariot costumes, from Cinna's understated look compared to Effie Trinket's bright pink hair, and the fact that a tribute's stylists could make or break their whole look and even whether or not they got sponsored...everything about a character's appearance communicates something. [Note also that that this is the world presented in the book; these are NOT my views about the importance of fashion.] So when I got to the description of Katniss' interview dresses, of course the sewasaurus rex part of my brain started trying to imagine what it would look like in real life. Here's the original description:

The team works on me until late afternoon, turning my skin to glowing satin, stenciling patterns on my arms, painting flame designs on my twenty perfect nails. Then Venia goes to work on my hair, weaving strands of red into a pattern that begins at my left ear, wraps around my head, and then falls in one braid down my right shoulder. They erase my face with a layer of pale makeup and draw my features back out. Huge dark eyes, full red lips, lashes that throw off bits of light when I blink. Finally, they cover my entire body in a powder that makes me shimmer in gold dust.

The creature standing before me in the full-length mirror has come from another world. Where skin shimmers and eyes flash and apparently they make their clothes from jewels. Because my dress, oh, my dress is entirely covered in reflective precious gems, red and yellow and white with bits of blue that accent the tips of the flame design. The slightest movement gives the impression I am engulfed in tongues of fire. I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun. For a while, we all just stare at me. “Oh, Cinna,” I finally whisper. “Thank you.”  (The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins)

Now, obviously I didn't use precious gems all over my version, and I definitely didn't include the color blue, and Jeanine doesn't look to be in danger of burning up every time she moves. The aspects of this description that I chose to include were 1) flame colors, and 2) movement = fire.  And before anyone gets all up in arms about not staying true to the book, check out the hideous, stiff, cheap taffeta-looking spectacle that movie-Katniss is wearing:

Her expression = my thoughts exactly. She does not look radiant or twirly. She looks like she went to that cheap store at the mall right before prom and picked up the first dress she found. It's like they skimmed the description and thought, "Oh okay, just make it fire colored." 

Um. Don't people get paid lots of money to make fabulous clothing? And this is what they came up with? Anyway, I toyed with the idea of putting LEDs into the dress to get the glowing effect, but then decided that might be 1) a bit much, and 2) too complicated and expensive for my purposes. Although I would still like to do some combination of light+clothing sometime...

Anyway, keeping in mind my limited budget and the fact that I don't know anything about making evening gowns (hello, I usually work with somebody's old sheets that they didn't want anymore!), I decided that I needed to use chiffon cut on the bias to get the type of movement I wanted, and the more layers the better. But it also needed to be light enough that it would at least try to give the illusion of a flickering fire.

I ended up getting eight yards of black crinkly polyester chiffon (not my first choice; just what was available) at Michael Levine's discount store, The Loft (after my trip to the FIDM costume exhibit!). Since they sell fabric by the pound, and chiffon has an excellent weight:yardage ratio, my base fabric only cost about $4. And I still have two yards left. For the fiery fabric, I picked up a yard each of iridescent polyester chiffon at F&S in a darker orange and lighter orange ($9.98/yd). I *almost* just bought the $1.99/yd red costume chiffon at Joann's since it was so much cheaper, but at the time I was afraid it would 1) look cheap, because it was cheap, and 2) make it look like a flamenco dress, and while flamenco dresses are cool, that's not really the look I wanted. Anyway, the iridescent stuff turned out to be the right choice. The way it catches the light and changes definitely helps with the fire look. When the light hits it just right, it's lovely.

With my fabrics in hand, all I had to do was design and make the dress (ha!). Since I was making the dress here in The City of Culver City, and my Katniss was in San Diego, I knew it had to be somewhat adjustable. Also, I want to be able to wear it if I want to dress up like a girl (somewhat) on fire. I decided to stick with my Easy DIY Maxi Dress (is that the worst name for a dress or what?) pattern, since its fittedness is largely dependent on an awesome belt, and just modify the shape of the dress to flow better. Here's my design sketch (apologies, I haven't really drawn people since my manga-fan days in college; I had to go look at my pattern envelopes to get an idea of how fashion drawings are supposed to look).

If you look at my drawing carefully, you'll see that it's really the same idea as the maxi dress, but instead of two rectangles sewn together, it's two pie-shaped pieces (with the tips folded down for the strap, which was just a piece of narrow double-fold bias tape). Now you can make one too! And if you want a gold sequin belt to go with yours, check out this tutorial!

Fiery wing-things! Photo from Orange Turtle.

Now, this looks like a nicely laid out plan, but here's the biggest secret that nobody knows (the root of the root and the sky of the sky and all): I drew this Saturday night, after the shoot. I had no plan going into the dress-making process; it was all "Uhhh...I guess I'll try cutting out a triangle here and replacing it with orange." For a while, it was super scary because it was NOT turning out like the picture I saw in my head. Also I hate working with chiffon. That stuff frays like mad and every time I tried to trim it I'd have to stop and vacuum up all the little bits. But then once I started adding the circular ruffles, it suddenly started coming together! Oh, the miracle of angles and draping! Anyway, once it started matching the dress in my head, things moved pretty quickly. I even used the scraps leftover from cutting out the ruffles for the little pieces of fire on the back shoulders. I won't talk about the hemming again, but it was definitely a mad rush and a late night trying to get it all done in time to drive down to SD. And let's not even talk about my last minute "oh crap, the arrows need a quiver, don't they!" moment in the middle of the night. Can we just say that those leather grandma pants never stop giving? They've already yielded a fake corset, a wand holster, flask wrappings, goggle straps, and now a quiver, and I still have several pieces left!

From here.

The perfect icing on the cake for this whole dress was our authentic mockingjay pin, which I got for free last summer at Comic-Con! I ended up giving the pin to Jeanine at the end of the day as a souvenir of the The Day She Was The Mockingjay. Also because I don't think I'll ever actually wear it and she seemed way more excited about it than I was. I mean really, my true fandom love is LOTR, not Hunger Games. Hmmm, I wonder if Orange Turtle will want to do a Middle Earth shoot before The Hobbit comes out in December...

A better look at both the fullness of the skirt and all the chiffon ruffles. I really liked how hemming it make it extra ruffly.
Also, please excuse the bare feet.

Summary:
Fabric: six yards of black, crinkly polyester chiffon (doubled up for the body of the dress, to prevent see-through-ness), 1 yard light orange/yellow iridescent poly chiffon, 0.5 yards dark orange/yellow poly-chiffon
Notions: 1 yard narrow black double-fold bias tape
Worn with: Mockingjay pin, that $2 thrifted gold belt
Techniques used: Roll-hemming chiffon with my rolled hem foot
Hours:  I'm going to say at least twenty, and that's not even counting all the design iterations going through my head at night
Netflix queue:  I tried watching a documentary about children during the Holocaust (it seemed kind of fitting while working on a dress for a teen sent to her death?), but it was too much mentally. I really needed my attention on the blasted chiffon, so I ended up listening to my most soothing albums on repeat: The Postal Service's Give Up, the Garden State soundtrack, and Mumford and Sons' Sigh No More.
Will you make this again? I highly doubt I will need more than one GoF dress, but despite my chiffon nightmares, I would like to work with it again. I love the way it flows and looks, especially when cut on the bias.
Total cost: Less than $30, which includes the fabric, thread, bias tape, and electricity for charging the hand-vac for all the little chiffon bits...but I still have about half a yard of the dark orange chiffon left. Can anyone think of a use for it?
Final thoughts: Sometimes I look at the pictures and can't believe I made this dress. It's so lovely and wispy and flowy and swirly and fiery, and even though I can't stand the color orange I love it. I love that Jeanine couldn't get enough of twirling in it and I love that Ryan loved it on her. I also love that it got me to finally break out my rolled-hem foot and overcome my fear of chiffon. I am so grateful to Orange Turtle Photography for giving me the chance to make something like this! Seriously, they are awesome. If you ever need awesome photographers for a wedding in the Bay Area or SoCal, think of them! Also, I am totally not biased just because they did our anniversary pictures...

And finally, here are some really bad pictures of me twirling in the dress (this was mid-hemming and without appropriate underthings, hence the neon pink bra straps...):

Ooh look, I'm on fire!

So fiery!

I love that you can see Walnut coming over to investigate in this last picture.

The Hunger Games Photoshoot with Orange Turtle Photography

You've been living under a rock
if you haven't heard of this movie.

I am very fortunate to know some Extremely Talented People. In fact, I even get to call these Extremely Talented People my friends. And when one of these ETPs, my dear friend Cindy of Orange Turtle Photography, announced on Facebook that she wanted to do a Hunger Games-inspired photoshoot and needed a team, I was all ready to jump in as stylist (it is my secret (okay, not so secret anymore; and yes, I just put a parenthetical statement inside another parenthetical statement, but I don't pretend to be an English teacher) dream to be a Cinna-esque, only not for kids about to die, and I would also prefer not to die a horrible tortured death myself, and oh dear I think I just gave away a plot point), especially since I loved the book. Other HG-loving friends quickly joined our prep team as the proverbial Octavia and Venia, and a massively long gmail thread was started. After weeks of shooting ideas back and forth, we finally got together on Saturday for our epic, multi-part shoot.

The prep team's tools!

We started at my dear friend (and bedsheet supplier) Shayna's place at 11 AM for hair and make-up. Shayna took a drastic departure from her usual kind, compassionate, and classically dressed self and became the obliviously callous and flashily dressed Effie Trinket. I promise we didn't choose her just because she's the only person we know in our circle of friends with non-black hair. Our friends Jeanine and Ryan (who are getting married in a month!) played the star-crossed lovers Katniss and Peeta. Ryan was such a trooper, getting mascara done for the first time without even flinching when Alice, our make-up person started waving bristly little sticks near his eyes. Jess did an amazing job transforming Shayna fine, stick-straight hair into pin curls, as well as putting in Katniss' characteristic side braid.

Alice starts turning Jeanine into Katniss. Excuse the bad iPhone pics.

Jess starts working her magic on Shayna's hair.

While everyone was getting transformed, I made my final costume selections. I'd already worked on my version of Katniss' Girl on Fire dress for about twenty intense hours prior to the shoot, so picking out clothes for the Reaping Day and Arena were super fun. Of course, it didn't hurt that all our models brought an excellent selection of clothes for me to choose from!

At 2:30, we packed up all of our outfits, accessories, props, and gear and headed out...into the pouring rain. After weeks of gorgeously non-wintry weather, San Diego decided to grace us with a storm on a day when we couldn't afford curls going flat and make-up smearing. Yay. Thankfully, it only rained on and off once we got going and many locations were inside or under awnings and such. We ended up shooting "District 12" at the Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego, "The Capitol" at UCSD's Geisel Library, and "The Arena" in the eucalyptus grove behind RIMAC. When we finally wrapped up around 6:30, everyone was cold and tired, especially since none of the costumes were particularly warm. Jeanine in particular was such a trooper for wearing just two thin layers of chiffon for the Girl on Fire shots! By the end of the day, the conclusion was that models work dang hard for just standing around looking pretty.

Octavia and Effie look on as Katniss and Peeta get their promotional photos done. Does this picture convey how freezing cold and wet and muddy it was in the eucalyptus grove? Because it was.

Cinna & Katniss post-shooting.

I felt so privileged to be able to work with such ETP for a professional shoot like this! I felt like I got all the fun of doing the creative styling, but without the long, cold hours of standing in the cold or the actual work of shooting and editing. Because even making the GoF* dress, while filled with long hours of hemming, was nothing short of thrilling. It was exciting to see something that was only a grand idea in my head get fleshed out fantastically; Jeanine was such a beautiful model for my work. I'm not big on crying, but I got a little teary seeing her twirl in the Geisel lobby. I'll be posting my drawings and design process and more details about the GoF dress tomorrow, just in case you're wondering how to make your own...

Anyway, to see the real, professional pictures of the shoot, head on over to Orange Turtle's blog! Here's a little teaser picture:

Effie and the District 12 tributes! Photo courtesy of Orange Turtle Photography.

*The abbreviation "GoF" will always make me think of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.