New Atelieri O. Haapala pictures

The day we took the pictures of my latest corset I was actually coming home from having been in front of the camera of my favorite photographers in the world, Saara Salmi and Marco Melander. Or Onyxei Haapala and Helmut Schweinstein as they are known in the Neo-Victorian portraiture project Atelieri O. Haapala. 

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Again they did such a wonderful job. And I now have three lovely new pictures as keepsakes of the fun day. I wore the natural form princess line dress from last year and I wore it over the new corset. It worked surprisingly well although the slightly different shape created some extra wrinkling in the unboned satin. But believe it or not, I kind of like a little wrinkling here and there. I like it when dresses I make have natural easiness in them instead of looking like stiff armor. 

1880s corset and a chemise with ball gown neckline

My previous 1880's corset has been too tight around bust and hips from the beginning, but I've always liked it, so I kept using it by lacing it unevenly. Now I was ready to try to make a better fitting corset. The shape didn't come out quite as I envisioned, but at least it can be laced evenly now. One day I'm going to try to make a corset with same fit but rounder curves. 

It's made from black cotton coutil and iridescent duchess silk satin treated as one layer, stitched with light blue silk thread. The seams are flat felled and act as boning channels. The front boning channels are sewn from the outside and made from silk strips and the back channels are strips of coutil sewn from the underside. 

The pattern is the same I used in the previous corset, the 1880's corset from Corsets and Crinolines, but this time I changed the proportions to fit my shape better.

I also needed to make a new chemise with a low back and front neckline to be worn with a ball gown I'm in a process of making. It's made from light weight cotton. The straps and trim is made from three different laces attached to each other to form a wider piece. The pattern came from one of the chemises in Fashions of the Gilded Age. It's machine sewn and hand finished.

To me the best thing about this corset is it's color that changes from purple to fuchsia depending on the direction of light. It was very hard to capture but here are a few more pictures of it in a different lighting.

The chemise:

Chemise pattern:

I took a lot of construction pictures of the corset, but for some reason my camera has lost them. Not that there was anything new or interesting if you are familiar with corset making, but it would have been nice to show the different stages. 

C. 1790 shoes

Since most of my recent 18th century dresses, both finished and unfinished, are from late 1780's or early 1790's, I thought it would be a good idea to make new shoes to go with them. These have lower heels with slightly triangular bottom shape and pointier toes. They are buckle-less and have a low vamp. The uppers are made from silk, lined with linen and bound with silk grosgrain ribbon. The soles and heel cover are made from leather. They are hand sewn with strong linen thread and decorated with pleated silk ribbon. The heels are carved from wood by my husband. I wore them in the pictures with my stockings and garters.

The shoes have been practically finished since September, but it took me three months to trim them. I'm not a fan of the pleated ribbon frill, but it is the kind of trim that you see in all portraits and most surviving late century shoes, so I'm sticking with it. The shoes before trimming:

Construction:

They are turned shoes and constructed basically the same way as my first pair.

Unfortunately I took only two pictures of the process this time.

The finished uppers.

Uppers sewn to outsole.

After that shoes were turned, the insole sewn in together with heel cover, the heel put in place and then outsole sewn to heel cover.

1874 day dress after a dress in V&A

This dress from the V&A collections has always been a favorite of mine. It's feminine and masculine at the same time. It's a perfect example of two tones of the same color in one dress, very popular choice for mid 1870's. And it doesn't hurt to have the pattern and construction details in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion. I used light blue and dark blue silk taffeta. I flat lined the bodice and faced the hem with plain cotton. The waistbands and the tapes for making the back poufs are silk petersham. All buttons are covered wooden molds. I tried sticking to the original construction as much as possible. Most notable differences are the cuffs, stitching down the bodice decoration around the outer edge as well and changing the skirt opening to center back. I also didn't think the side seams really needed boning, so I boned only the darts. The main seams are machine sewn, except the piped sleeve seams that are hand sewn. All the finishing and trimming is also hand sewn. The dress is worn over a laughing moon bustle and my early bustle underwear. I made the hat from a slightly mismatching grey silk taffeta. The pattern is from Miller's Millinery and I decorated it with the same black and grey striped silk taffeta that I've been using a lot lately. And the gloves are the same ones I made a few months back.

Because it's freezing cold and snowy outside, we took the pictures in a Victorian era winter garden, owned by the city of Helsinki. It's a beautiful place, free for everyone to visit and you can even bring a picnic basket with you and have a picnic in the middle of winter.

Construction pictures:

On the overskirt I made a narrow facing and then sewed on the bias cut strips of the dark blue silk.

Trimmed overskirt without the revers.

I covered a lot of wooden button molds for the decoration.

For the mock button holes I decided to make a narrow tube of fabric in a similar technique as if I was making a rolled hem.

Then I cut the tube in 6 cm pieces and iron them in shape.

I decorated the skirt fronts before sewing the skirt together.

The skirt without the overskirt.

The insides of the skirt.

The overskirt inside out. It buttons on through buttonholes on the skirt side back seams.

The insides of the bodice.

The hat frame is hand sewn from buckram.

I'm incapable of making fabulous over-the-top hats. Mine are always pretty simple.

The cotton lining.

The LM bustle.