ghostly dress

Headless wonder !

Currently haunting my hall radiator is the finished calico and PVA dress. It does look strange without a body in it  and is not at all what I expected at the start –  perhaps it was rather ambitious to do a sack back but a good experiment overall. It is fairly rigid, quite cardboard-like, but how this will last I do not know.

Process Problems – supporting the weight of wet fabric as it dries.
Keeping shape as drying – strange things can happen.
Preventing set areas becoming wet and pliable again.
Drying times.
Unblocking pipes having spilt large bowl of glue solution down the sink( hot water and unresolved anger issues worked wonders)

Benefits - do not have holes in fingers from sewing,

very direct way of working – see it, do it, dunk it,
small periods of working then put to one side to dry,
errors can be undone – frustrating but satisfying in the end.

  Would I do it again? Yes.

Would want to use different fabrics – cotton-based for absorbency- patterned/ striped?

Want to be able to fix more permanently – acrylic varnish?
Like the idea of having the 'seams' raw on the surface – really looking at the construction and fitting.
Might keep a body form inside or a wire armature .

Will try just with cutting out and sticking, no sewing.
In the background is the dress I've been making  while the glue dress dried. This is a fairly straight forward 1780s polonaise pattern, loosely based on the extant example from LACMA.  I've gone for

en ferreau back and front fastening with hooks and eyes. A pain - quite literally- to do - an awful lot of sewing before construction and and then a lot of finishing. I didn't help myself by adding a stiff interfacing and lining late in the process - to give that corseted look.  It just needs a wash to get the blue marker pen out and a press over to be officially finished! I do like the fabric, it is summery and fresh, and yes it is Laura Ashley curtaining. One extra tip - do not stab yourself with the needle and then bleed onto the nice crisply white fabric. It is an avoidable trauma - washing it out, not the stabbing.

Next task is going to be doing illustrations for this - patterns, drafting and construction notes and then the fun bit - painting. Romney I think for this - making the most of the creases without getting precious.

costume/sculpture II

This has been fun. Messy. Hysterical. More messy. But fun.  It is only possible to do a little and then wait for it to dry and stiffen, so even little things take a lot of time,  not making and doing time but standing-back-and-not-fiddling time - the very worst kind.

 The back story-
 Aim - to make a free standing C18th costume, inspired by Boucher and Gainsborough - using calico and PVA glue. This is a trial piece to assess the creative and practical potential of this method of working.

it's more like this from LACMA

It was meant to be elegant  like this, but....

Process so far -Bundled up a mini papier mache  body on a stick to be the armature.
Added a skirt. Dunked it  in glue, dried then redunked and dried again to make rigid.  Then added a stomacher and  the body of a sack backed jacket based on the pet en l'air made before Christmas. This was without sleeves or collar, to be added later. Dunked, draped and dried.

This was all in the last post - just didn't have the heart to update,  adding that the weight and wetness of the jacket caused a skirt crisis and it started to collapse over night.
 After expressing myself quite fluently, the skirt was resoaked and reset and redried.  The jacket was in decent state so only needed a gentle re-wetting and then resetting onto what is left of the now mutant body form and re-rigid skirt.
 For some reason the glue is struggling to hold the jacket closed onto the stomacher, it keeps gaping, I may have to resort to pins or tacks to close it while trying again. This sounds simple  but the fabric is now rising nobly to the challenge of going rigid - the last stay stitch had to be done using pliers to pull the needle through and the cotton thread wasn't as strong as the cloth!

Patience is not a virtue I possess, there are teeth marks on the furniture. The waiting has led to several ideas/ associations. At present the height of the back neck and the general headless quality remind me 'Sleepy Hollow' - could this be Mrs Headless Horseman, or perhaps he was a cross dresser before Tim Burton came along to do the film?


 Sleeve making has now happened, although not quite as originally planned.  The raw sleeve units were made up with flounces and elbow tucks but not then set.  To lessen the weight and the awkwardness of joining rigid to rigid,  just the top section of the sleeve was glued and then attached to the body, pinned (pliers again), and dried. They have moved as they dried but the glue is determined not to let go so it will have to stay. The rest of the sleeve is being painted with glue  and allowed to dry in sections. I'm just about at the flounces now, without major mishaps so far!

The neck edge has yet to be sorted out- the back lowered and then cased. I am thinking of cutting out  as much of the original body as possible leaving the costume to support itself.  I doubt if this will be easy or neat so extra finishing - maybe a lace edging will have to be done.    Another week of happy glueyness!
She(he?) is in the hall drying - I keep sneaking a peek round the door to check but she is being well mannered at the moment. I hope to have it finished by next week, I'm sure I said that last time.....
Also should have an en ferreau polonaise gown done by then -  I'm part way through fitting it - but key question - can  I be said to ferreauing?