A Costuming Engineer: The wardrobe

Some of the costumes I have made, divided into the sections historical, steampunk, modern and other.

Historical

Ca 1905 (2015)
Clothing for someone who needs to be able to actually do stuff in her clothes:

Blog posts about the underwear for this one here and the dress here

A more upper-class version of the dress, with lace blouse, a new belt, bolero and a proper hat: blog post

1895 inspired blouse (January 2019)

Blog post here
1888-1890's walking dress (Oct 2015-january 2016)

Soutache embroidery on vest and skirt. With two vests, one more historically accurate and one more steampunk. Blog post of skirt and the finished outfit.

Dual use Steampunk Victorian/ Victorian bustle dress (2015)
I modified the steampunk victorian uniform to be more elaborate, and also made a hat so I can use it as historical wear.

Blog post here

Late Bustle gown, ca 1883-1885 (made in 2010, changed in 2015)

This was my first post-16th century dress. With time, it became slightly too tight, so I decided to re-design the front of it (I like to be able to eat dinner even while corseted...). I had already used all the seam allowance to get some extra millimetres, so I added a fake vest and blouse, making it both a bit bigger and a bit more elaborate. Blog post of the re-make. I also added more stuff to the hat.

1876 dress (May 2016)

Research of skirt support garments here
Construction of over skirt here
And photo session of final result here

1861 Dress (2015)

Made from a pattern in Pattern's of Fashion, to wear at "the Day of the Big Crinoline" here in Linköping. My blog post about the dress here,

Regency ball gown, 1810's, 2011
I made this for a Jane Austen ball. When I started, I did not like the regency fashion, so I decided to make it tasteless but fun. No attempts at all at using HA materials. The hat was inspired by the BBC movie, but did not turn out quite as expected. But I guess not all outfits gets to be favourites...

18th century (2014)

Blog post here

I like the look of the looped up back of this dress, but I did not get along well with the fabric - the silk taffeta was very unlike the cotton linen and wool I usually use, so there are some weird wrinkling. I also need to make a hat and learn how to make a bigger hairdo. (Update: I saw the same wrinkling in one of Anne Boleyn's silk dresses in BBC's Wolf Hall series, so now I feel better about this - if BBC's costumers can accept these wrinkles, I can accept them too :-) ) A blog post with more pictures and some info about how I made the hairdo in the upper picture can be found here.

English 1500's (2012)
This costume is from the fantastic book The Tudor Tailor. The pictures shows it with and without the black over-gown, and with different headwear.

Posts about making coifs and how to wear them (2015).

Tudor gown (2007)
My first step up from medieval to the more structured later fashions.

Blog post here.

Medieval, inspired by late 1300's (2007)
I had moved to a larger city and met other people in medeival costuming, which meant learning lots of stuff and getting inspired. I updated the red-green medeival with a more HA deeper neckline. I also made a purple wool dress with buttoned sleeves, here worn under the red one. Also a new hat (still a bit weird, but based on period paintings and manuscripts instead of a book). The purple dress is entirely hand sewn. Making all the buttons and button holes for the sleeves took a lot of time. I even got into a flash of doing it all the way, so the lacing bands for both dresses are made by card-weaving, of silk buttonhole thread.

Medeival-ish (made ca 2004)
The second medeival dress, after learning that princess seams was not the way to go. Made in a lovely but not so HA wool crepe I got very cheap at a small but very nice local fabric store (the owner liked me and had realized that no-one would ever pay what this fabric was really worth, anyway, so she could as well sell it to someone who would appreciate it and did not mind the few small moth holes in it). Meant to be 1420-ish, but based on a painting where you could only see the dress from behind, so it's quite speculative.With a hat thing based on something the book "Hats and headdresses".

Vaguely medeival (made ca 2002)
My second ever historical dress, worn over the first one (a light blue linen gown with dark blue side gores in skirt *shudder*). Not the most historically accurate (HA), but I was very proud of it when I made it. And when I made this I had learned that it was not HA to have a linen gown, so it's wool. One step on the HA road :-) This gown has now been unpicked and the fabric reused for a Tudor gown.

Steampunk

An 18th century inspired admiral's uniform (March 2019)

Lots of gold braid hand sewing in this one! Blog post here.

A 1880's tea gown/medeival crossover (Sept. 2018)

With the Crown of the First Speaker.

Steampunk White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland (June 2018)

Blog post here

Steampunk with greenery dress (Sept 2017)

Blog post of design process here, and the finished result can be seen here

(July 2017)

Another use for the newly made crinoline, bag and hat. The rest is bought.

Steampunk ghost detector box (Nov 2016)

Blog post here.

Steampunk inspired by 1500's (Nov 2016)

Gown, hat and bag made by me. Blog post here.

Steampunk Victorian Uniform Dress (2014)

Blog post here
This one also won an award in an online costuming competition (blog-bragging here).

Steam punk Victorian (2013)
Made for an event from garments I already had: the bustle dress bustle, skirt and hat, a military inspired blouse, and belt and necklace that was gifts. Two belts became a strap for a small leather bag.