professional bad example

i guess that with the masks finished, the next larger project i will invest my energy in is a regency dress, with a small dose of choli because in my impression regency bodices actually fit surprisingly similarly to cholis. it sure would be nice if that freedom of movement carried over! i'll just do my best to not focus on whether i actually get around to finishing anything. sometimes, the journey is the destination.

so fun fact, my interest in historic clothing started entirely with the fact that i coincidentally ran across a regency dress pattern while looking for something totally different and it reminded me of princess serenity's dress from sailor moon, which i loved. so i did more research on regency era clothing, which exposed me to clothing from other eras too... i learned how to make regency era clothing, and then how to make modern clothing, i went through a three-year apprenticeship as an apparel tailor and learned to do it more professionally and efficiently, and then i taught myself pattern drafting on a level way beyond what was part of the apprenticeship (which isn't much, apparel tailor is the industrial side of the garment making profession, so you don't need to know how to draft patterns for individual bodies)...

ultimately, the fact that i'm sewing high-quality face masks right now is down to the fact that i liked sailor moon when i was a teenager. causality is honestly beautiful.

i'm prescient, my uncle just sent my father a mail asking whether i'd be willing to sew 8 masks for his family (two masks each for four people, uncle and his wife and their adult children) in return for adequate payment. don't even know what to ask for beyond material costs (which will add up to a bit less than 20€) though, it's not as if i desperately need more money. but yeah i will do it, i trust him to understand that these homemade masks offer far more protection to others than to your own self, he accepts that because my energy levels fluctuate all the tie it could take me a bit longer to finish everything and he also knows i will need to order the elastic online. (though adding the elastic is literally the last step, so i can get started well before that arrives.)

so that'll be four masks for men and four for women. lots of fabric to cut, considering that the model i favour has a fitting seam down the middle and a lining and thus has four pieces each (you can theoretically put in a disposable filter too if you have suitable material, and a wire to help confirm the top edge to the shape of the face better, but i'll leave that be, it can be added after the fact if they deem it necessary). i should ask for some money for the work itself just because of that.

tested the "normal cut" choli pattern i bought from blouse guru and am quite happy. i really can move my arms incredibly freely and the shoulders have made no attempt to fall off my body so far. i won't post any pictures though because i managed to be stupid and cut two identical fronts despite checking multiple times, so now one's wrong side out. doesn't matter for a mockup obviously, but it still looks dumb and not worthy of someone who's had the amount of professional training i've had.

if these patterns are all this good, and yet so affordable (at least by our standards)... man, i really hope the prices make for decent earnings in indian terms. the people behind this site deserve it.

issues: seems like as is, the bust measurement and the bicep are too large. i may just plain have measured incorrectly and picked the wrong size though, or it's because my breasts are unusually small. so, take the whole thing in where needed and see whether that improves the fit. also, i still want to try and modify it using my personal block and see what that looks like. especially the special backwards-pitched sleeve and armscye - i spent what probably adds up to days of my life perfecting these, at a point when i already knew that my time was running out, i want them to see some kind of use...

i generally feel so good about doing stuff that isn't just passively browsing the internet. and even being able to do so in the first place. i'll make the most of what time i have left.

hmmm, a well-fitted bodiced petticoat would probably also help define the shape of the bust and underbust some more. i mean, some people who value strict accuracy even less than i do use fitted bodiced petticoats as their only layer under regency dresses, and it can look quite decent. my stays do support my bust pretty well, but additional support can't hurt. it would have to be without a closure or maybe with a hook and eye one though - drawstrings leave a gap between neckline and underbust so they don't create enough tension to lift and reshape the bust, buttons are far too bulky and would show through any dress that is worn on top

hmm maybe i will just make a regency petticoat with straps this time... there's not actually much historic precedent for the popular kind of bodiced petticoat (one of the extant examples has sleeves so it's probably actually meant to be worn under a net dress and can't really be considered underwear, one has an embroidered hem so it was likely also intended to be seen, one has a quite low waist and is probably actually from the 1820s...) and the bodice of my sheer dress will be lined anyway. i kind of suspect that what most of what we've come to consider bodiced petticoats was actually the kind of meant-to-be-seen petticoat that goes with an open robe, not the underwear kind

i make the fucking effort to hand baste the bias tape in place, now it turns out that the machine with the right foot for accurate topstitching won't feed the material properly and the machine that would probably do it doesn't have a suitable foot?? you can't be fucking serious, people have made much more involved stays and corsets using machines that are much newer and much less sturdy

(and if i intended to hand sew the damn stuff, the basting that's already in place now would actually only get in the way)

how on earth did i bind the tabs on these (inaccurate) short regency stays i made ages ago? i can only remember thinking "oh that was easy, why do people complain about this so much", whereas right now i'm just thinking "WHY"

got it. cut the centre front piece of the stays on the true bias and all other pieces on the straight grain, and in combination with a pattern a little smaller than your natural measurements, you get a nice smooth fit. no boning except the pieces next to the lacing edges. the full bust is slightly larger because it's hoisted higher on the ribcage where the back is wider, the underbust is larger because you don't get the sharp break at the underbust level that you get with modern undergarments or later regency stays (so part of the breast tissue is mushed into the underbust) the waist is unchanged. no need to muck about with weird nonstandard grainlines, though i can see why bernhardt did it (partial bias has almost the same properties as true bias but uses less fabric, i believe it was used in 18th century bodices too). i've never worked with the true bias before, but it's my new best friend. and the way it fits isn't anything like what you'd expect from historic support garments, either! honestly it actually feels less restrictive than a modern longline bra!

now i just need to decide whether i really want a centre back lacing. it would look much nicer, but while i was able to lace myself into long regency stays at one point, it is really annoying to do. i also found that laced-on straps are actually functional, but that the reason they're functional means i should possibly plan a gap between the end of the strap and the top edge of the centre front - they've stretched out by more than a centimetre. maybe it's because the mockup fabric is thin and also wasn't prewashed, but i'm still wary...

the buttonholer's really useful for making eyelets on a mockup, too! i know people usually make lacing strips with grommets for corset mockups, but that kind of only makes sense if you're certain you're going to make more than one. if you aren't, well, twenty machine-sewn eyelets probably take less time to make than a lacing strip....

note to self though, use a brand-name needle and brand-name thread for buttonholes or the friction will cause the thread to break all the time