...And I like the cleavage. Neck boobs ftw!
I've been dying to do something with an 18th Century flair for at least 5 years, if not longer. And finally the opportunity has presented itself! I'm so giddy!
I've actually been excited for this project for over a year. I decided to do this about a month before I got pregnant. So as I'm not pregnant anymore, it's time to corset (or rather stay it) up! And obviously I have to make something pretty for Bat to wear as well.
Be prepared for an amazing 18th Century masquerade version of Joker and Harley Quinn!
So. Excited!
Like I'm vibrating with excitement!
Since I'm still waiting for my body to get somewhat back to normalish (i.e. changing boobs and tummies are hard to make corsets for), I started out with Bat's Joker. Ultimately I wanted to go for the regal look, if a little unkempt, because let's face it, Joker is only Joker if he looks a little crazy. But I wanted him to look rich. I'm going for the French court appearance-ish, you know? So I went on the hunt for awesome fabric and I had found the most beautiful purple with gold damask 100% silk...but at $25.00/yd, I couldn't justify that expense. (that was only after I found out I could only order full yards. I promise you, I was ready to shell out the money if I could have gotten exactly what I needed.)
So there went that idea.
But I couldn't get it out of my brain! Awesome things tend to stick with me.
So I had to find something better. Or recreate it. And for a second I had it in my head that I would substitute this awesomeness with a purple taffeta with black damask pattern...but I fell too in love with the purple and gold look. It just seemed way more joker to me. So my only other option was stenciling.
Of course.
I have this horrible habit of giving myself a ton of extra work to do for the sake of an amazing looking garment...more on that later, actually.
I had thought about using JP Ryan patterns, however they were about $25 a pattern and I needed at least 2 of them... but then I came across this gem - Butterick 3072 and figured it would work just as well for a fraction of the cost (with the exception of the pants). So I set about finding a nice dusty grape-y purple taffeta, some pretty gold paint, and a fancy damask stencil that I got at hobby lobby for $2.99.
The frock coat was supposed to be unlined but since I didn't use wool/twill/generic heavyweight fabric (I used taffeta), I flat lined all the pieces with cotton to give the garment a little more weight. I lined with just plain black cotton...looking back I think a better choice would have been something of a gold/orange stripe, or anything with a little extra flair. Or even something green. Oh well. We all love those hind sight moments.
To save myself the annoying task of making sure things lined up beautifully, I decided to just stencil a border around the coat, which worked out beautifully mind you. Once the body of the coat was sewn I got to stenciling and it was looking soooo fancy.
ps: that one sleeve really isn't that crazy looking in real life
The stenciling was relatively effortless. I definitely gave it more thought and build up than I needed to. I'm sure it's not perfectly symmetrical and my only major issues were where it bled on the outsides, but you honestly can't tell unless you're looking super close. And as I'm not participating in the mask this year, nobody should be scrutinizing my work that closely. (not that they would scrutinize that closely either, of which you can check out my views on that right here)
This thing needed a ton of buttons, and I would have loved gold...but buttons are EXPENSIVE! Luckily, it's a lot simpler to cover shank buttons that I had originally thought. So I got 2 dozen buttons for about $2.00 (score!) and covered them with the taffeta. But that obviously wasn't enough. I'm a sucker for crazy details that people appreciate, only if they know about them, (odds are nobody sees them anyway...) so I decided to paint them with the same gold paint I used to make the damask pattern. And since I'm making Joker, he obviously need to poke fun at Batman in some way. Naturally I figured the best way to incorporate some Batman drama was by painting the batman symbol on the button!
my cute little Batman stencil - about the size of the tip of my pinky!
I've only put the buttons on the sleeve so far (in the wrong spot mind you (of which I don't have a picture of yet - next update!)...they should totally be along the bottom, or even in a different spot all together, but who wants to waste awesome batman buttons if you can't see them!) but I think it's going to add that little extra bit of awesome! I can't wait to add them along the....lapel?-for lack of a better term, since it really isn't a lapel. Honestly those would have already been added if I could get the fat plastic shank through the hole my awl makes. I plan on sewing these down with black ribbon through the shanks that run down on the inside of the coat to keep the buttons from flapping around like shank buttons like to do. They're rebellious suckers.
I have tons more progress to tell you crazy peeps about, but I want to keep the few people that read this on the edge of their seats with sewing anticipation...so we'll save that for another day!
