The wedding photo

There are going to be  2 blogs this week. This one is  about completing a commissioned drawing for Janette -famous as  She who Loans Rotary Cutter.  This is the nice one. (The next is about this week's sewing adventure - provisionally titled 'when sewing turned nasty').




Janette asked me to do a pencil drawing of her parents on their wedding day, something a little more personal than a photograph.  She had seen some of the Regency fashion plate drawings I do and asked for something along those lines. (See website-https://sites.google.com/site/franbrammer/galleries/costume-illustration )

 Several photos were emailed; lovely classic church door poses showing off the smiles, bouquet and beautiful dress;  but early trials were not the best - they are squinting into the sun and nearly all detail on the face and dress is lost.

Working from photos of photos can be risky - these were all slightly slanted so the proportions of the figures changed in each - don't believe what a difference this can make? - Try it. Place a photo flat on a table and photograph it from extreme angles - in some you will have a chin to rival Jimmy Hill's and a little pointy head - in others you look more like Benny Hill crossed with a mad science experiment. Fun in the right place but irritating when trying to gauge someone's height and the shape of their face.

J had a less formal photo that we decided would give the best results - especially as I could work first hand from it. We agreed priorities, expectations, size, and no excuses later, work began.

Initial sketch and  beginning to block in the tone. With such strong sunlight very few details such as eye shape are evident,  so the capturing of the individual was down to overall shape and the positioning and depth of the patches of shadow. On Mr J the shadows are too harsh, the smile is too square- making it look forced, and the neck too straight. Mrs J's face is  slanted. leaning forward which is distorting the head shape.





Corrections to Mrs J - thinning and reshaping the far cheek bone, more depth to the hair to the left. Mr J now looks uncertain about the smile so more to tweak there, but the softer shading works well.










More adjustments made - Mr J's neck as a curve running up behind the ear and into the skull shape, he looks more poised and relaxed, The extra shading in the hair is defining him more clearly as well. Decisions still  have to be made about  the background and  how to finish the figures. Janette was clear about wanting the focus to be on the faces and bouquet so I proposed just letting the drawing fade away from these areas. I liked the way her hand tucks over his forearm so included this but without a huge amount of detail.






This was the sketching phase done, all of the bones of the drawing are in place, it was time to flesh them out in more detail and depth. Pencils were sharpened and battle commenced. The changes are probably most evident on his hair and the bouquet, the shapes are crisper, the surfaces have a character, everything is in sharper focus.

And the finished piece - added in the veil and some of the dress pleats very lightly as suggestions to balance the composition. The faces and clothing have been cleaned and tidied up with out letting it get too polished. I always start scruffy and quick as I think my way into a piece and gradually tighten it up as it develops. At times this requires an act of faith but it usually works out. In this the key areas are controlled and sharp but the pencil marks retain their sketchiness in the outer reaches, a bit like a soft focus effect.
  The additional  colour is watercolour washes in the gentlest shell/rosy pink. On the morning this needed to be done a pink rose opened in the garden, so armed with secateurs I waded into the jungle undergrowth to nick a petal to colour match.( If you don't know my garden then this was an act of extreme bravery - I like very growy things that just get on with it by themselves and still try to believe that if you can't see the soil then there will be nowhere for the weeds to grow)

And the client?  Janette picked this up during the week and seems very pleased with it. She had seen it in a couple of stages so it wasn't too much of a surprise. She was still speaking to me on Saturday and planning on getting this framed so I guess she was happy!

Happiness is a contented client and an outcome that even this artist is pretty pleased with. Add onto that the sun is shining and I've just remembered that there is one Magnum left in the freezer ( not for long) and it makes up into a proper Sunday.

white pelisse

Of  lovely April days, invasion of cat,  white pelisse, and other many distractions. This is the blog as it was meant to be!

Last week-

The making of the white pelisse-

The sun has shone, the grass and weeds are happy. The bees buzz, there are butterflies, the garden is in its purple Spring phase.  I might have been distracted from costuming but I have been refining copies and interpretations of fashion plates to show the latest additions to Gwendoline's wardrobe as well as constructing 18^th Century items for myself, so it has been busy.

I decided to use a clingfilm  base and made Gwendoline a masking tape shell. This was sectioned into pattern parts and then cut and flattened to create templates- and it worked! There is very little gaping, or bowing, or pinching – all without any fiddling, adjusting or cheating in any way. Umm, wow. Don't worry, it won't last.

This of course has lead to unwise decisions, there is no point having patterns that will only fit once, I wanted to find out how flexible this approach would  let me be – 1820s shapes- lower waist, broader shoulders, exaggerated sleeves and decoration. The fabric is curtain offcuts – trying to look like a heavy weave cotton or linen but I'm thinking that the closest this has come to nature was being sat on by an invading cat. ( I yelled, it went from snooze to panic in one move, did a complete circuit of the kitchen tops and windowsills at full pelt before escaping out the backdoor, fled through the hedge and off down the road.... leaving me with hairy fabric and chaos!)

 One idea arising from the gingham frock (last week) was using the smocking as a substitute/sculptural form of gathering, so set out to try a Juliet style sleeve with the repeated gathered bands down the arm. I also wanted to do more with pleating on the bodice. Even my favourite pelisse has gathers above and below the waistline. This fabric is quite stiff, it will bend and flex but goes clumpy and lumpy on curves and bulks up very quickly. The pleats in the back look good but have left the waist heavy, a wider waistband than originally planned might be needed or else the waistline is going to end up the thickest part of the whole garment!

last week's progress

Having faith in the pattern pieces makes such a difference – and saved so much time. No repeat fittings, unpicking and realigning. Getting from 'what shall I do now?' to having a believable bodice took less than an hour. The smocking took about the same. If I had a brain I would have done the smocking before making up and attaching the sleeve. But the sleeve was a bit of a guess, I knew I wanted more fullness at the back rather than the front, and that Pingu arms must be avoided. So I began with a basic gathered sleeve shape and made the curve at the top steeper and off centre . It did take some minor fiddling as the fabric protested about curves but it sits reasonably well, although many sins may be lost in the puffiness. And of course the piece I cut as a pattern is now firmly attached !.

 

This week-

Overall the pelisse has worked quite well- the good times did not last  The collar was a problem, it still tries to stick straight out rather than relaxing on the shoulder. Repeated washing did not help it, the fabric has a great deal of 'boing' - it tries to reset itself to flat each time. The radial  pin tucks have helped  a little and something to experiment with later on. Fears about the waist at the back were well founded, it is thick and seriously needs stiffening. Perhaps come at it from the end - put a bow on the  waistband cb so the bulk becomes deliberate ( see little blue example above).
  I do wish this stuff would make its mind up - it bends when I don't want it to and is too stiff when I want it to bend.

 As a relatively plain pelisse it is fine, the gathers in the sleeves give it more character and style. The gathering on the centre back  should perhaps only be attempted with finer cloth. Poor Gwen does not look terribly happy it. It does nothing for her figure - the extra bulk on the waist is not good , there is nothing voluptuous or even jelly-on-a-plate-ish about her to give definition, she ends up looking like a tree trunk. In the plates above, the waist is so narrow in comparison to the shoulder/ sleeve line, and  Gwen goes in just a little and out not a lot. I do wonder about making her a set of stays /padded bodice-  can't pull her in but might be able to push her out. ( I'm sure I thought this before sometime - a little set of transitions with bust enhancer?)

One moment - repeated washing?  Knowing how much I enjoy domestic chores  you will have realised this had to be an emergency. Well, first the 'sharps' needle I was using was very sharp and I hadn't noticed, second time was due to creating drawings in pastels. The washing has caused problems, now the lining is not happy at the armhole, causing the wrinkling seen above, a bit of unpick and pull  will hopefully sort it but this garment will remain untouched until the pastel phase ends.

Distractions-
1. Pastels- not a medium I usually use but... apart from the dust .....they are quite fun.

2. The fake book. - it started with a charming photo posted on facebook from the Australian Jane Austen Festival in Canberra.  In the general flow of very learned conversation we decided the photo looked like a book cover, couldn't resist it, and....  Last time I caught up it was either Mr D would emerge a la wet shirt, or she had  just shoved him in.  The drawing took  over a morning and then working out the editing  programme took about the same. (Gimp2 - a free download, complex but very good)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Gave up putting it off and set up a website- AARGH.

 

https://sites.google.com/site/franbrammer/home‎

View shared post

  Pastels were easy, Gimp is straightforward. If I had known how to do this it would have been simple! Used Google sites, free, supposed to be an easy site builder, self hosting, and well I'm googled for almost everything else. Looking back, once the mind shift was made, it was straightforward enough.  Over riding the templates was the most frustrating thing - typing in black, size 12 in default font to find it published in blue, boxed in a corner and.......

Hopefully all sorted, hopefully,.... Feeling very exposed at the present.  Be warned - will have to start experimenting with promoting it next....

 

 

And totally recommend

BBCs   "At Home With The Georgians: A Man's Place. 

So much more than important people and oh look at the houses. Well done to Amanda Vickery.

More Doris Day than Grace kelly.....escape to the 40s/50s

As my facebook contacts know I went for a little detour into the 1950s. I have the sad and tattered remains of a vintage pattern for a ball gown and have always loved the illustration on the cover. The saucy eyes and pose are not the best reasons for making a dress, but.  I had a donated (thanks Althea) piece of rosebud cotton that was so period it crawled out of the cupboard and prostrated itself on the cutting table before I had the pattern pieces out of the packet. As usual I was  making a scale version - this time  measure in inches, switch  to cm and divide by 4, and at a ballerina length it just fitted onto the cloth.

compare J Arnold's 18thC to scale piece of the 50s

There should have been  bells sounding from the word go. With the clear guide to the pattern shapes and then laying the pieces out on the floor it should have been apparent that this was a close cousin in construction to some of the 18thC robes I've been making. Not my brightest moment - I hold having to crawl around under the table to get enough floorspace as my excuse. (don't know why it is sideways in the photo- it wasn't that bad!)  Construction was fairly straightforward - central pieces with inserted panels over the hips to give the skirt fullness and pleated at the seam lines, back opening, no sleeves. The muff I took as optional and declined to make it.
On the whole it went together well, there is a complex join at the shoulder which  was a pain at that this size - too many layers to join and too little room for seam allowances - the armholes are bound and the tops are not really meant to join directly, there is a fold on the bodice front that carries over the shoulder rather like the robings on a robe francaise,  and they attach under that.  This has ended up as a little solid lump on the point of the shoulder but at least it is holding the shape and the garment together.


18thC v 50s

 The back is also reminiscent of the last polonaise dress I made  -en ferreau- with long central sections, cut into at the waist line with the bottom section then being pleated and reattached to the top to form bodice and skirt. This one was done in 2 parts, the front or back bodice and middle panels of the skirt cut as one continuous piece,   the side skirt panel attaching under the bust dart with the skirt seam hidden in inverted pleats then attached to the bodice. This means that the long line form neck to hem is uninterrupted front and back with a short  seam over the hip.
Neat.
 The theory was fine, the sewing not quite so good. I did tight mini French seams which are stiffer than the fabric so the skirt seams stick out with greater determination rather than aesthetic awareness. Sometimes doing things right is wrong, and doing things less than best is better. Hope that makes sense. 

The over all effect is more tea dress than ball gown - cotton was always going to do that to it, but the style works well. I had to make up a little wadding figure with wide enough shoulders to model it on to get the full effect of the cut. The emphasis on the breadth of the shoulders compared to the torso and then balanced by the full skirt is very glamorous and for such a modest dress very flirtatious. I don't know if this  comes across in the photos but I tried to capture something of it in the illustrations. Loved painting the rosebuds! Shame about the faces. Really need some real people to model these dresses for me - don't know any this scale!

Some things remain the same no matter what era- Where are my diddy scissors?, I know I left my favourite needle stuck in the arm of that chair, where is it now?, and why after taking things out of a cupboard do they never fit back in?

Gwen travels back in time -

Considering that I was interested in Regency costume  pet en l'airs and now a caraco are an aberration. These jackets were common wear in the mid 18th century but were sadly outmoded by the turn of the century when the Neo Classical was all the rage.  Mine was based on the example from Snowshill again used by Janet Arnold and Nancy Bradbury. It is not a complicated design = no shaping to the front, the underarm seam is a dart  and the back  panel is cut in 2 with the pleats in the skirt following down from the seams, a gusset giving extra fullness at the base of the underarm dart. The cuffs are lined and winged. Simple! 
I'm sure it should have been but again the pattern had to be Gwenned. I should be good at this by now! I am beginning to believe more firmly in the need for a basic block pattern for each era rather than scaling up from the original each time. Perhaps by next post I will believe strongly enough to have done something about it.

It was good to be doing a tailored back, even though I had to piece the fabric to make the 2 centre back panels. The extra seams are at the waist so do not look out of place. Understanding the fit was a problem. The National Trust photographs the garment as an artefact rather than a piece of clothing  and each of the other extant examples I found seem to be variations on a theme! Some were very much more intricate, shorter, longer, decorated and plain, some, en ferreau, some sack backed and others tailored! I was as faithful to the original as possible but don't think I got the underarm dart right. This became a seam and is too upright  you can see the pull to the bust, it should be angled  forward from the arm hole which would move the gusset  more to the front.


loved the back details and naturally flirty skirt!

 The flare on the skirt has had tantrums, the top and lining fabrics argued, especially at the gusset ( the triangular insert over the hip). A lot worked out when I gave Gwen real hip rolls. The pleats immediately became flirty rather than droopy!  The real pain has been the front neck line, the angle to the shoulder wasn't quite right  and it has a tendency to gape just a little. Neither the lining nor the top did this but together they made trouble. The sleeves were inspired by this poor behaviour - these are fitting no. 4. They are in and sewn and I don't intend there to be no.5.  
I had thought it would be longer from the illustrations in Patterns of Fashion,  but then I wouldn't have been able to fit it on the remnant of fabric at all. The proportions look awkward - I did have to redraw the waist lower by about an inch, so there is more body than skirt compared to the original. ( don't think anyone will know if I don't tell them)The winged cuffs were also a new thing and quite fun to do. It is a lined tube, pleated on the front and then sewn to the sleeve. The cuff is wider than the sleeve which gives the 'wing'.  I had to do the top fabric in 2 parts so they are a little stiffer and more awkward than they should be.

Not entirely happy with this. I am expecting more now, very little margin of error allowed. The flat lined garments look much smoother at the seams and the fitting is easier. This was started as 2 garments and then joined at the front and neck and then the side dart put in holding the two together.



Snowshill caraco,  National Trust

The 2 extant garments provided the shapes and form I was aiming for. The Snowshill one was the inspiration right from the word go but the Met museum one showed a similar robe in the round. The neckline is scandalous, obviously (hopefully)  there was an undergarment or a well pinned kerchief to preserve some modestly (and prevent chest colds). The sleeves are a little longer, without cuffs, but  I tried to get them to hang in the same way.  It does have the gusset, similar problems under the arm. The skirt is longer and more shaped, the pleats give the back a bit of a kick but not to same degree as mine. Perhaps I should have pressed the pleats in more aggressively.


Distractions - Gwen2  the clone- resurfacing and tidying, Christmas decorations, drawing and painting. Now reading about the Fairfax family of York. Have also put my drawings and paintings of these costumes onto a page - tab is at the top -

the aftermath

Not a stitch in sight ! - sorry,

Friday - left work on Tuesday!!! - 20 years of got-to-keep clutter has come home with me- not least 4 mannequins plus Gwendoline the Stockman mini figure and Millicent the 1960s milliner's model. Plus countless bags of really interesting books, collections of bits, examples and resources. Can just about move.

 this is the tidy version...

Need to go back to work to earn enough to get a bigger house so that I can leave again...



alien cat invader- claims ownership of best spot in the garden

So what has been achieved – genuine domestic chaos, now on facebook (help!), had blood test, found the local breast cancer ward  would like some bags made (see The Sewing Forum), sent card and pressie, followed more crochet tutorials on youtube- I now know where I'm going wrong, designed and ordered promotional postcards, got very confused by HMRC, got insurance quotes. Add weeding, reading about Caroline of Brunswick and chasing bumble bees out of the house. Add weeding.

Doesn't look too bad a list, but can not compete with the to do one.

Desperate for magic words to undo the curse of marestails, to make my honeylocust tree happy and healthy again, to make all hills downhill when cycling, to stop my sis posting me about hot tubs, sunshine, leisure time.

I hope to be making again soon – first need to get organised  and will not start until the house is sorted, hedge done, understanding of HMRC advice is achieved and at least 2 more venues checked out – I'm intending to run some drawing classes in the Autumn – you are all invited- bit of a major round trip for some!

 Temporary storage, and look! Carpet!!

Thinking ahead -I'm still in love with the detailing on the pelisse or spencer sleeve heads – it makes some of the rouleau decoration on the 1820s dresses seem rather heavy. There are so many ideas out there to be explored. There is the full scale spencer to do of course -  I must book onto some sewing classes to freshen up the skills again. It may not directly help with these costumes but all experience of handling and working with fabric, techniques and approaches would be welcome. I hate making for me. I can blame the parents for not being taller but all the rest is down to happy self indulgence.

met museum

Sunday – I'm winning – still squeezing too much stuff into too little space but the making more mess before tidying away phase might be over. I can see carpet! The wool stash is stowed, the fabric stash is either waiting to be washed or sorted and away. All but a few of the Art bits are behaving, some defy organisation – the watercolour things keep breaking ranks and invade various rooms and cupboards, I think they breed. There is still a handful of bags to go through but the worst is over.

A lot of chucking out, hoovering, even dusting, and final putting away and I'll be back in control.

Next test is to remember where I put everything.

Potential to dos? Or would it be wise to shift garment and have a go at another dress? I will have to sit down to ponder this...... with a coffee.... and something to keep the coffee company.  Just don't find the dresses as exciting at the moment... but it would be a different challenge .... this may be a more than one coffee question.