50'ies trainride

In early summer 2013 I finished a 50'ies dress for myself. By now I've made a few of them like the yellow dress and the striped dress, and I got the basic shape down quite well. This time I thus focussed on the details of the dress: A wide standing collar, matching cuffs, scarf and belt. I had my trusted white petticoat and a matching pair of shoes, that although not vintage did the job quite well, so I was ready for a little trip.

At 'Græsted Veterantræf' a weekend filled with vintage vehicles of all kinds, I was so lucky to find a nice matching train, with the same gray tone as my dress and a red stribe to match my lipstick! How lucky can you get?

'Sølvgrisen' (the silver pig) is an old lady from 1952, that used to work near where I grew up in Lyngby Taarbæk municipality. She is currently living in Græsted, where the nice people from Nordsjællands veterantog takes good care of her.

Photographer: Anders Hansen

The chequered house dress

In the spring 2012 I started on a housedress for American civil war reenactment. I finished the dress in December, but have not have time to show you the pictures of the finished dress. As this is the first UK post on the dress, let us take a brief look back on the process:

My concept drawing and numbers in my costume drawingbook:

The  bodice is an unaltered TV440 Pagoda bodice from Truly Victorian, flatlined with a dove-blue cotton. The sleeves are linned with the same cloth, but this time the chequered cloth and the lining was joined at the hem first, and then treated like one layer. It contains no boning, as it sits nicely on the body without.

 The buttons are self-fabric buttons, and the hem of the bodice is finished with self-fabric too, hand stitched to the inside.

The crinoline for the dress was a pain to make: I started out making the crinoline the shape I wanted the dress in. But with a good petticoat beneath, it of course became much to big in the top, where most of the petticoat volume is. Thus, I ended up reducing the crinoline two times, in order to get a more suitable silhouette.

To finish the dress I added a white collar with lace, and a pair of loose undersleeves.

the collar pattern without and with lace:

The sleeves were attached to the outer-sleeves with two stitches to the lining.

 The finished dress was with me on two different fotoshoots: One with Rene Bang in December, where we were outside in the freezing cold and one with Henrik Jensen indoor in a studio. Unfortunately you look like shit, when you are freezing your butt off, so only a few pictures were useful from the shoot with Rene Bang (very much not the photographers fault).

Picture taken by Rene Bang:

 (all the outfits were made by me, you might recognize the others.)

Pictures taken by Henrik Jensen: