The DuPage County Historical Museum is currently hosting an exhibit of 17th/early 18th century French clothing until September 9th. All items are from the private…
Leave a CommentTag: 1700s
Nothing makes a pant look as fantastically olde-timey as a fall front. Unfortunately, a real fall front is a pain in the patouty to sew (trust me), and it’s not something that can be added in after the fact in any sort of historically accurate manner. Fortunately, if you’re not 100% concerned about authenticity, it’s easy enough to add a mock fall to existing pants….
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Sometimes, in theater, you need a specific period shoe and you don’t have the time to order it from the internet, the money to order it from the internet, or an actor who wears a size you can order from the internet. (In this case, it was an “all of the above” scenario – I had a Benjamin Franklin who wore something like a 13EEE. This is hard enough to find in a modern shoe at community theater prices. As for replicas, you can forget it!) This is not a demo that will show you how to make an exact replica. It’s more of an act of desperation, which might possibly inspire others to do a better job than I did. ;) I just needed something good enough for stage at the “this ain’t broadway, sweetheart” level.
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So, Laura said she was looking forward to a demo on how I made the Frock Coats for 1776. I used a pattern. (What?! Missa? Are you feeling ok??) It’s not that I’m not all about cheating, or being creative, or drafting patterns. It’s just that it easier to a pattern that already exists and change it up. Here’s some ideas…
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Have I mentioned that my show has, by and large, come from Goodwill? Yes, indeed. One of the characters in 1776 is “a courier”. (No, really, that’s all they call him in the script.) He’s an army courier who brings messages in to the continental congress. I need him to look like he’s a) military and b) really, really dirty. This means that I get to build the coat, and then I get to have a bit of fun with it…
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Oddly enough, I needed 19 pair of Colonial britches to go with my 25 Colonial vests. (Because I had much better luck renting britches than vests, not because I let anyone go pantless.) This is very similar to the trick I used for the Oliver! knickers, but they need a slimmer fit and different length. It goes like this:
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I needed 25 Colonial-looking vests for 1776. Because I wasn’t sure that I’d get round to making a coat for everyone, I wanted vests that weren’t faked out in the back, and I needed them to have structure and to be long enough to cover the obviously modern fly fronts on the britches I was making them. Now, you can’t just trot off to the Goodwill and buy a real live Colonial vest. But you can pull off something passable, if you believe that that there are, in fact, user-serviceable parts inside of a jacket….
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I’m a huge fan of shoe roses (aka, “shoe hoo-ha-s”, “shoe hooters”, “shoe dec”, etc). Whatever you want to call the silly little things, I love them. Seriously, little hats for shoes? Tee! Put me in, coach! They just make me giggle… If you need to period-up a shoe with a strap across the foot (like a mary jane or t-strap style dance shoe), here’s a quick and dirty way to build a shoe rose that is relatively actor-proof…
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I’ve been doing some background work for a project, and I had to do up a Conic Block for Lizzle. Her body is a leeeetle bit stylized, and she’s particularly got a relatively wide shoulder and upper back (like a swimmer), and she has a distinct curve at her upper back (a swimmer who spends too much time hunched over a desk, maybe?). Anyway, here’s an adjustment to the Basic Conic Block draft for situations where the upper back is significantly larger than the back bust measurement.
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I realize that instructions are far more helpful when you can print them out and put them on the worktable while you’re using them. I also realize that pages upon pages of full color photos do not a happy printer make. I’ve made a not-so-chatty (yes, I actually can edit) PDF version of the Basic Conical Draft directions, redone with black&white line art.
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