Halloween 2011: Cleopatra Costume Ideas & Inspiration

Where do the fashions of the 20s & 60s awesomely meet? Cleopatra!

Theda Bara and Elizabeth Taylor- bohemian and refined at the same time.   

My choice for a not-lame, not-slutty Halloween costume is the last of Ptolemaic rulers herself.  She'd be scary enough, she had both her siblings murdered after all.  I've decided to make the costume which is pretty bold of me since I haven't made anything adult sized yet. But what to make?

I purchased both these patterns, but they are pretty costumey. Which is fine, don't get me wrong, I just know how long sewing takes me and I'd like to maybe be able to wear it more then once. The floor length is not good for me no matter what and a chiton made of cheap charmeuse is kind of a one time deal. And not historically accurate, but I'm going to have to let that go since it's not like I'm going to be hand dyeing linen in order to have a proper Egyptian dress.

I have yet to figure out how to fold these back up to look like this. 

I opened one of the patterns and was overwhelmed. The sizing is totally jacked as it is a vintage, out of print pattern which I was prepared for- I read that a size 12 in a pattern is like a size 2/4 at the mall so I bought the "EE" set for 14,16,18,20, assuming I'd be making a combination of the patterns given my slight height and major boobage. The measurements look on target, but then look at these finished sizes for the actual garments! They are huuuuuge! Even for my generous bust line. 

A quick check on PatternReview.com confirms that these are WAY oversized and everyone who has made it has taken out several inches once they started to do fittings. So, I may have purchased the wrong set of patterns. Gumdrops!

I then started second guessing my decision to make the dress myself.  I could just buy one, I mean, a vaguely Grecian looking dress is pretty standard fair for women's formal wear and then I'd be able, for sure, to wear it again (all I own are jeans and cocktail dresses anyway, I don't have any in-between wear). I poked around on the Internet and found a bunch of things that might work with the right wig and makeup:

Might be my favorite.  Vivienne Westwood, $370.

My least favorite of those that were more literal.  Alexander McQueen, $1335.  It just feels like something my Aunt Carol would have hot glued and puff painted.  All due love and respect to Mr. McQueen's corpse.  Plus, the length would be terrible on me.

A tad formal, you'd have to imagine it with an embellished belt and a headdress for effect, I think.  LA PETITE S*****, $1600.  Far too difficult to knock off at my skill level and way too expensive for traipsing around with sticky fingered kids in the dark, but easy for me to wear again.

A more 1920s Cleopatra look, much prettier in detail.  Rue de Mail dress, $990.  Sexy!

I could never wear this.  It must be lovelier in person.  I'd hope.  Robert Rodriguez, $1160.

One I could buy and not feel bad not wearing again.  With a big collar necklace and a wig?  Instant Cleo.  And it's linen.  And it's cheap!  On Etsy, $56.00.  I do hate strapless bras though.

I still think I'm going to try and make one and buy only if I totally fail.  I bought the wig and these scarab earrings I already own.

Off topic rambling:  The earrings are fascinating as the setting is from the late 1890s/early 1900s, before the discovery of King Tut's tomb, so they belonged to a  fashion trend time traveller!  It would be like finding someone wearing Levi's in a photos from the 1860s-- sure they were around, but not popular yet.  The stone scarabs themselves are ancient so it's likely that they were custom made for a woman with a personal interest in Egyptology, just like the guy in the Levi's would probably have been a San Francisco gold miner. I once x-rayed a mummified cat that was actually a stork inside. There was a scarab in there too.

Back to sewing:  Maybe I should try this pattern?  The shorter length would be way better on me.  Instead of the tied shoulder I could tack it with thread and pin it with something gaudy.  Maybe embroider something on the other strap?  I'm open to any and all suggestions!

Cynthia Rowley designed. Might not be as cool when sewn by me.

Sewing Project: Space Shuttle Tribute Embroidery & Patch T-shirt

The last Space Shuttle mission is about to come to an end with Atlantis en route back to Earth and it brings on a not-unexpected or even unique wave of nostalgia given my age (I'll be 35 in a couple months). What can I say? I'm a Cold War kid and I love the stars.

I always thought I'd go see the space shuttle lift-off in Florida. You know, one day.  Unspecified future tense.  It is by all accounts a truly awe-inspiring thing to witness.  I wished for years that they'd reinstate the West Coast launch program from California, but they never did after Challenger.  This is not the place to get into the politics of funding the space program, but our nation's history of flinging humans off the planet in a dangerous (and yes, expensive) bid to understand the fundamentals of the universe and how it operates is something I'm happy to share with my children.  The space shuttle is cumbersome and outdated and needs to go, but I hope it is replaced with something just as innovative and iconic.  And one day, I swear, I will go watch it, whatever it is, hurl brave people into orbit or beyond. 

On to the sewing!  There is currently a print of a small piece of embroidery on Atlantis, (the original was too heavy if you can believe that) experiencing zero gravity right now-  it's by Texas artist and fellow craft blogger Rachel Hobson and earned its place through a contest sponsored by NASA and Etsy. 

Her blog is all kinds of fun, check it out.  I totally agree with her win, but the other entries were pretty damn amazing.

It is truly a great piece, the texture is incredible and the stitching is both intricate and simple.  It is needlework at its finest, I think.  If it were a painting it would be called painterly, in that you can see the evidence of the artist's hand at work.  I have no idea if there's a word for that in embroidery or not. But it is inspiring and beautiful.  My embroidery is far less artistic and way more juvenile in part because I made it for my kids.  The concept could easily be transformed into something more chic and sophisticated by ditching the shuttle entirely or removing the booster and flames, doing it entirely in black and white, putting each of the capsules and the collection of stars into their own mini hoops and adding considerable texture... it would actually be quite lovely with an entirely different execution, but this was for my son and he is five, so no subtlety here: 

In case you don't recognize them, which is likely since I drew them, that's the Space Shuttle and beneath it the Gemini, Mercury and Apollo capsules.  Each star represents a person who has died on a spaceflight.  There are 18, counting four Soviets, thirteen Americans and one Israeli.  5% of all humans that have EVER been launched into space have died doing it.  The occupational fatality rate for an astronaut, i.e. the percentage who die while on the job, in space or not, hovers right around 10%. To use that hated statistical mis-analogy of the imaginary meal:  if you have dinner with 10 astronauts one of them is going to die at work.  Go Science!

xkcd, the webcomic that would really hate that I didn't explain how the fatality incident rate for astronauts is skewed since TOTAL number of deaths have to be counted per astronaut- there are so few astronauts, there is no other way to do it.  After doing my own math I checked around the web and it seems people have come upon this problem before and either ignore it or call the whole calculation off.  The mortality rates for other professions (like firefighters, roofers or loggers) which can be calculated per 100.000 and on an annual basis are difficult to impossible to compare.  THAT SAID, generally speaking, being an astronaut is ~60% more deadly then any other profession over the last six decades, making it the deadliest job in the world by far.  Then again, I took a year of statistics 15 years ago and use a calculator to balance my checkbook.  So yeah.  You might want to ask someone else.  I can't believe I bothered doing all that math for my sewing blog.

Back to the sewing!  Sewing and the Space Shuttle have an intimate relationship.  The thermal blankets that keep it from disintegrating on re-entry were hand sewn with glass thread for the last two decades, mostly by women, using industrial Singer machines, one of which is from 1918 and originally was designed to sew saddles for horses. The blankets have to be perfectly tailored, obviously. NPR ran a great bit called "The Homemade Spaceship" back in 2006 which I found fascinating and then followed up just this week as these highly skilled seamstresses are about to be put out of work.  I don't think making slipcovers for couches is ever going to quite compare.

This is one of the thermal panels- it is made of woven silica fabric, woven glass fabric and silica thread and quilted by hand.  This one is from the National Air and Space Museum so you can see where it has been marked "scrap" with a red stamp.  Lots of awkward shapes to lay across the ship.  I had a hard time quilting a runner for my perfectly rectangular, flat dining room table.  With cotton.

And the patches!  NASA loves embroidered patches!  Here's a retrospective on some of the mission patches. Totally worth a look.  Most of them were designed by the astronauts themselves; some of them are better then others. I think the most successful ones are those that were designed with thread in mind, you can kind of tell when a design didn't quite translate to embroidery.  Each is unique and nearly all include their names which is a nice touch.  My favorites, purely based on design:

Apollo 13.  Lucky or Unlucky?  Great design, but the horses didn't quite make the transition to thread.  There are three horses, 1 each for Lovell, Swigert and Haise.  One of them was intended for Ken Mattingly- guess it was a good thing this patch didn't include the names since he was kicked off the mission two days before launch).

Final servicing of the Hubble space telescope in 2009. 

Insignia in patch form vs.

in emblem form:  the only insignia that I think looks GREAT as a patch and boring as an emblem.

I made this t-shirt for my son Henry.  Nothing too special, just patches, but he needed something since he didn't get a 4th of July dress:

 

Linkys!









 

More Excuses: This time in French!

No posts or sewing projects to share because I was in France for two weeks. It was awesome. I'm feeling a lot more relaxed about everything.  Fourteen days without the grind makes everything feel... lighter.

It was a partial business trip so I spent most of my time wine tasting, but I did my best to sneak in art & history where I could. I really wanted to poke around a fabric shop and buy some French embroidery thread (all I have left from a purchase 15 years ago is peach) but could not find an open shop to save my life.

How awesome does that thread look?

I found this sewing shop in Chinon, but it was closed. Like everything in France. We made lots of jokes that the French must be vampires because Chinon, like many of the French towns we were in, was totally deserted. We'd walk around these cobble stoned streets during the middle of the day and be completely alone, 7 of us like a group of (well dressed) survivors after a zombie attack. Totally bizarre. It wasn't like it happened once or twice either, but everywhere we went. The French need to start having more children or something.

My brother-in-law, Kevin, his girlfriend Serene and my sister-in-law Margaret Ellen.  Note they are totally alone.

Margeaux in Bordeaux: No survivors.

Creepy sign= evidence of human habitation, but again, no humans.

Another deserted town.

Took this photo in the evening in the city center of Borge.  As the sun came down we saw these three.  Clearly they are zombies.

We spent the last couple of days in Paris. Since I've been to Paris bunches of times (and my husband couldn't care less, we might as well have been in Cleveland) I decided I wanted to skip the usual sites and hit up the Musee de la Mode et du Costume (the Paris fashion museum) and the Musee de Arts Decortivs, in particular to see their textile collection. I was thwarted. The Musee Galleira was closed entirely for structural renovation and the textile portion of the Arts Decortivs was off limits while they were installing a new exhibit which I didn't realize until we walked the whole thing. Boo! They did have a special Ralph Lauren exhibit- of his cars. Double boo.

Speaking of textiles... I spent an entire day in Paris unironically dressed as the Statue of Liberty.  If she wore no makeup.

I was able to find bits and pieces of sewing and especially embroidery pretty much all over the place though and have a much better appreciation for the hours of skilled hand-labor that went into many of these things, even the everyday stuff.

Wool pleats in a 16th century nurses dress.  They are perfectly even.

 Sick beds in the Hospices de Beaune.  All I can think of is Harry Potter.  Is that wrong?  Also the hand dyeing and washing these linens had to have received.

Beaded embroidery for Louis XVI.  I can't even imagine how long this must have taken.

Outlined satin stitch.  I could totally do this!

Just not on this scale.  Unbelievable and entirely by hand in the 17th century. The head and foot boards are embroidered all the way up the sides.

Serious velvet draping.  How would you even go about pinning that let alone sewing it?