BlacqueSacque

....or...."My Favorite Color."

I wear so much black in everyday modern life that my poor mother, when we see each other, is always bringing me colorful clothes she's found, trying to spice my work wardrobe up. Oddly though, I'm not drawn to black at ALL in historical clothing! There are many philosophical inferences that could be pulled from that dichotomy, but I needed a black gown for Tea at the Haunted Mansion at Costume College this past summer so one had to be made.

My friend had a black silk faille that she had no intention of using, and gifted it to me! I had just enough for a sacque, a little bit of trim, and the front panel of the petticoat which is perfect and HA because the Georgians, never ones to waste expensive silk, often used a different and cheaper fabric on the back panel of the petticoat where nobody would see it.

It's quite hard to see any detail on this gown as the faille is not nearly as light-reflective as taffeta, so I opted to keep the trim confined to the stomacher.

 

Black lace, as far as I know, would have been very uncommon around the neckline/stomacher edge of a gown in the 18th century. I'm not sure I've ever seen an example of it, although black lace is used elsewhere.  But the vintage lace I found just looked so charmingly funereal yet elegant that I couldn't resist!

 They had some gruesome and gothic photo-shoot setups where you could take selfies at the Tea, and I enjoyed looking tragic as much as possible. Here's me about to depart this world by drinking out of a poisoned chalice, or something.

 I finally met up with the delightful Taylor, a friend I had only ever talked to on Instagram before, and she is just a hoot in person, I hope we get to hang out at other events some time!

I re-wore my black veil from my Gala costume the night before, and it only added to the grieving widow look, lol. At least I have an 18th century mourning gown now! The one thing I look back on with this dress and want to change (and will) is that the petticoat ended up being longer than the gown, and I HATE HATE HATE that look on myself, so that petticoat will be getting shortened! The one thing I have learned is that J.P. Ryan must not be a tall lady. I'm 5'9" and both my sacques from her pattern have been too short in the gown's front panels and I think it's due to the suggested measurements (or it could just be me. It's been a minute since I really looked at the pattern). Luckily you can't tell it as well on my bronze sacque because I dipped the serpentine trim down quite low on the front edges.

On to the next outfit!

The $7-a-yard Sacque

Last year, I was not in love with this fabric when I first saw it online. An Etsy seller with remnants from a decor business had taffetas in very natural, earthy colors at a bargain-basement price of only $7-8.50 a yard, and being that I had never yet worked with real silk up to this point, and also not being confident in my skills whatsoever, I bought it just because of the price. It's easier for me to not worry about diving into a project if the fabric isn't hideously expensive. The fabric picture was a very dull, clay-like color, looked very flat, and my expectations were pretty low as I was not even sure it was real silk.

Then it arrived -- most definitely silk! And a really lovely orangey-bronze color!

I was so excited I instantly bought several other earth-colors from the seller, and now have a rich chocolate brown in the stash for a 1790s drawstring gown some day (probably trimmed with gold sequins and embroidery) and a medium brown shot with black for a 'best middlin' 1750s gown eventually as well.


To date, I would say the "Bronze Sacque" is the most time-consuming thing I've made, because of the tiny fly-like trim I added to the edges of the self-fabric trim.

At first I just sewed the absolute bare minimum for a basic sacque from the excellent J.P. Ryan pattern, because I was under a time crunch to get things done to attend Costume College this past summer. As the Gala theme was "Streets of Venice" or some such, I knew I wanted to do an 18th century masquerade painting, so I chose "The Fair Nun Unmask'd" by Henry Robert Morland, which is one of my favorites. So  mysterious!

There were a lot of details I knew I wouldn't have time to replicate before Costume College, so I just went with the most identifiable bits, especially the mask:

The shape of the inexpensive plastic mask wasn't the best, but I really enjoyed painting it! Lo and behold, several people at Costume College knew exactly who I was supposed to be!

After the fun and exhaustion of Costume College, I looked at the gown again and had to decide how to finish the whole thing up. Having gotten quite a bit of yardage for "oops" purposes, I figured self-trim would be the way to go. I had extremely small trim to go along the edges of everything, a twisted silky twine with tiny fringe bits spaced out every so often, and it looked enough like fly trim that why the heck not. It doesn't show up well in photographs but I think it's a lovely little textural detail in person. No regrets.

 Oh, the drama. 

Here you can just see the little bits of silky fringed trim on the edge of everything. 

This gown is now an easy go-to for 18th century formal events, and I think turned out really beautifully. Time well-spent! On to the next gown!

Yellow chintz francaise

Words do not express how much I adore this fabric! It was a lucky find at a heavy discount (although I think the original price was a bit ridiculous anyway since it's just cotton, no matter who makes it). The pattern is "Calimere" by Lee Jofa, and is a gorgeous approximation of 18th century 'Indienne' prints.

As soon as I saw it online, immediately a gorgeous sacque at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston came to mind:

(French, 1770s, Chinese yellow silk taffeta with polychrome painted vining floral motifs)

I used the JP Ryan sacque pattern, and I discovered that like my plaid pet from last post, I had issues with the sleeves. Apparently there is just too much fabric in the sleeve head for my shoulder build or something, because I have had to cut a lot of it off to avoid poofed sleeves Anne of Green Gables would be proud of. Everything else went together easy peasy though!

 Yeah I use ugly cotton bias tape for petticoat waistbands, what of it? Ignore the hilarious poof under the petti, you would laugh if you could see how my duct tape dummy is mounted on this thing that was a table lamp built onto a small wooden table/magazine rack. It makes an interesting support shape under skirts anyway.

My favorite part, of course.

 

Proud of my teeny weeny stitches that are slowly getting better!

 

 I just love how buttery and rich this looks. It didn't act too heavy for cotton at all.

 I have yet to get this gown trimmed the way I would like. The sleeve ruffles are done, and I managed a stomacher before the event, but I still have plans for long ruched trim on the robings.

You can see the left sleeve that has a little extra party going on over there, due to the extra sleeve head fabric...I think I got it tamed down correctly on the right. 

And now, have some pic-spam:

 

These were taken in the Saint Louis Art Museum on the day of a picnic. I love this one. "Yes, I'll have that writing desk to go, please."

 

 Untrimmed gown, but hey, there's a lot going on with that fabric print. I have since ripped the stomacher apart because I didn't like my last minute decoration on it.

 

#selfsatisfiedwoman

 

 Overlooking my palace grounds.

 (jk, 'Art Hill' in Forest Park has a stunning Versailles-like lake with bridges and steps.)

à la vôtre!

 

And this leads right into the next post, which will be insanely picture-heavy, so I didn't want to combine the two! Read on for the Saint Louis Georgians' spring picnic!

A Cotton Sacque

Growing increasingly disenchanted with Instagram as a platform for sharing projects, I'm hoping to catch up on posting creations or events from the past months here on the blog. There's just too little space for writing on Instagram, and the whole platform is made for people to just keep compulsively scrolling through and past what people have made till the next eye-candy fix. Poor reward for the time and energy poured into everyone's gorgeous handiwork, which is deserving of much more time and perusal! I'll probably continue to post things there (I'm @littlebitgerman) but it doesn't give me the satisfaction to go back and revisit my photos like it does here in blog posts.

So picking up from my last post aaaages ago, I noticed that at the end I posted a work in progress -- a cotton sacque. I definitely finished it, and got to wear it out to a tea this past year! It turned out not to be my favorite sacque, the cotton is a bit stretchy and the print of course isn't historically accurate, only mimicking a damask (and in a color I don't think I've ever seen in 18thc art, lol!). But it was great practice for the next sacque -- a beautiful light butter-colored floral, also cotton, which I'll share soon as well.

 

A little false-compere front with buttons. Self-trim with cotton is a little more cantankerous than I expected.

 

Trying it out with the gown in progress

 

 

 

Had some weird places on the trim that I wasn't happy about, I could never figure out why this one was bulging a bit.

 

Is there anything as pretty as a sacque-back?

 

First real try-on with pictures thanks to my hubby. Plz excuse nasty inaccurate Chinese lace -- I basted my much nicer engageantes into this when I actually wore it out of the house...but I just wanted the look here.

 

I forgot that I *drafted* this until I looked at this picture again to see the back seam. This is probably the last one I'll ever draft (maybe!) -- I did my first blue silk sacque this way too and liked the fit of it but I spent so much time fiddling with it and agonizing over it that it took too long. For my more current sacques I have used only the JP Ryan pattern, which has a side seam for the torso. I actually think I like the back seam better though and might have to do some Frankenpatterning some day.

The first chance I had to wear it was a small tea, thrown by my darling friend Christine (aka SewStine). She finds all the most delightful places and is way too generous. So cute in her lovely cap and chintz gown.

 

Emily (@historicthimble) has the prettiest bright Italian gown...so spring-like.

 

I tried to go for a day-wear look with cap and sheer apron.

 

OH YEAH. Oh, all kinds of things are coming back now about this day. I wasn't feeling well and was upset about something so I don't think I was even wearing stays, bad bad girl. ALSO, now I'm remembering that I stupidly washed this gown because I had spilled something on it shortly after making it, and it SHRUNK, because I never pre-washed the fabric before working with it. Annnnd my stomacher that I never should have thrown in there also shrunk hideously tiny, so I had to make a new stomacher for the first outing, and this one sadly doesn't have the pretty pleated trim like my first one. Darnit. Anyway, a pic with my sweet friend Kimberlee in a sacque I helped her finish.

 Stay-less me, looking far too happy and loose, hahaha. Ah well.

After the tea, we all took a little jaunt over to Tower Grove Park for a few outdoor shots -- we'll have to go back in the spring some time when it's all green and lush.

Sara was being our photographer for some of these pictures, bless her! We look very much more suited to a spring garden than this wintery day, but passers-by appreciated us and stopped in their cars more than once to ask what we were up to and had we made our own clothes?

 And of course the obligatory shoe shot! Can't have a gathering without one of these!

 

Sara's silk bonnet was just the cutest thing! I need to make one.

 

A smorgasbord of delights!  I actually forgot until just now that Kim and Emily had used the same fabric, but for two different styles of gowns, and that Christine and Sara's were very similar with their little sprigs on ivory. So pretty, and all accessorized just a little differently. I think they would not be out of place on the lovely streets of Colonial Williamsburg. 

All-in-all, I was happy to have a new gown to wear, but I wasn't too impressed with the way the fabric quickly pulled out of shape...there were a lot of wrinkles around the bodice a half-hour into wearing that weren't there before. How much of that was due to me shrinking it in the wash and how much was because of my lack of critical undergarments on a bad day, I don't know. It's all good though! This one I have dubbed the Aqua Practice Sacque, since it was very inexpensive vintage drapery fabric for a reason, and it probably will not go back into rotationbecause I have made four other sacques since! The next one to share, chronologically speaking, is my plaid red/green Christmas sacque... coming soon :)

 

Yep, definitely not wearing stays. Lol. Maybe I'll try wearing it again some day with proper support.