The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: An Evening Dress For Elisheba

As I mentioned in my burn test post, I've been working on a dress for Elisheba.  Here it is:

My design sketch:

This dress felt like a lot of firsts: first evening dress, first time doing a little net crinoline, first time working extensively with straps, first time working with fabric chosen entirely by someone else, first time making a toile.  Writing it up, I realize that the only things I had never done before were making a toile, box pleats for the net crinoline, and the narrow (comparatively) straps.     

The dress is a princess-line, unwaisted dress with a contrasting center front panel, shoulder straps, decorative back lacing, invisible zipper in the back waist, and a mini-train.  The fabric is polyester (probably) satin with gold metallic overlay on mostly pale sky blue background with dark blue flowers.  The front panel is polyester (probably) brocade in dark blue with gold and bronze dots. 

I started with the pattern for McCall's 6382 and another dress of Elisheba's (from ebay) that has the same basic construction as the design sketch.

Things In My (Indoor) Garden

schlumbergera (aka christmas cactus)

Caturday Post: Scaramouche is Dubious

An Outfit Fit For A Musician

The court suit of Johann Hummel.  Yes, that Hummel!  Images courtesy of the wonderful FIDM Museum, who post about their amazing collection online!

I think this is utterly fabulous!  That embroidery!  The ruffly shirtfront (neckcloth?)!  The embroidered waistcoat!

It is a great sadness to me that gentlemen these days dress primarily in boring, unrelieved black and white for formal occasions. 

The Mad Person-Who-Stitches: Science!

Burn tests are a venerable and respectable way to identify stuff.  And you get to set things on fire!

A little explanation: I'm working on an evening dress for Elisheba with fabric she brought back from a Ugandan excursion while working in Peace Corps Tanzania.  Of course the fabric is fabulous:

It's very lightweight and drapey and shiney, but also easy to snag, pull the weave out of true, and it shreds almost as much as the heavy costume satin I work with a lot.  I wondered if it might be silk.  This seemed unlikely, given the cheap price, but I wondered.  A quick internet query suggested that the quickest way to determine fabric type is with a burn test.  One tea candle, bare concrete sidewalk, bucket of water, and scrap of fabric later, I came up with this:


Definitely synthetic.  The gold overlay flames and burns extremely aggressively (the twisted, blackened portion in the upper photo).  The non-gold-overlaid bits burned less aggressively, but they did burn, with flame, and left a crispy but not very hard, twisted edge.  The burned portion without metallic overlay had no smell that my nose could detect.





















While I had a lit candle and bucket of water, I tried a number of other fabric scraps from my stash, because science!

Satin from the underdress for Elisheba's dress:
it melts into hard, shiny, slick, slightly flexible (but easily broken if bent too far) plastic!  I actually like working with this type of mid-weight satin: it's strong, tightly woven, hangs well, and takes many types of embellishments in stride.  I just have to French seam everything and/or use Fraycheck liberally to stop the raw edges from shredding away.  And not set it on fire. 







Used silk sari I turned into large pillow covers:
it...vanished, flamingly, leaving a hard,
bad-smelling residue at the edges.  Had to be
dipped in water to stop burning.  Not real silk, then. 










Nylon tricot, used for aerial fabrics: it vanishes,
rapidly, with almost no flame, leaving a thin, brittle rim of hardened fabric.  Smelled faintly of burning nylon rope (hard to describe: not exactly unpleasant, but unbreathable, a little bit like old charcoal ash, a little bit metallic, a little bit chemical but not ammonia or chlorine smells.)  Note to self: do not under any circumstances combine fire dancing and aerial fabrics. 






Stretch velvet from a leotard: burned aggressively,
with flames (I'm guessing the added surface area of the velvet pile increases the burn rate), twisted up a lot and left a hard, plastic-y residue.  Also split where the selvedge edge met the main fabric.  Do not combine fire dancing and velvet leotards.  









Net, to fluff out the underdress for Elisheba's dress:
it vanishes, rapidly, with almost no flame, leaving a
thin plastic film at the edges of the burn:













Cotton/polyester twill (ratio unknown), used for a
doll's tae kwon do outfit, a Hakaryu doll for
cosplaying Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki, Zelda's apron
from Legend of Trapeze Zelda (yes, we do Legend
of Zelda on a trapeze.  We are that fabulous.), and
various other small projects: burned aggressively,
with flame, twisting up and leaving a hard residue.








100% cotton from cosplaying Meow from
Kazemakase Tsukikage Ran: burned aggresively,
with flames, no twisting or hard residues.
Burned portion split and frayed under tiny amount
of pressure.  Burned portion smelled good, vaguely like cooking meat on a charcoal grill.










100% linen from a commission for a Roman-style tunic: burned aggressively, with flames, no twisting or hard residues.  Burned portion tore and frayed
under tiny amount of pressure.  Burned portion smelled wonderful, kind of like pine straw heating up under a June sun or mesquite chips for grilling.


 




Conclusions:

1. Fire is still one of the most amazing and powerful forces for change that we have discovered. 
2. None of the fabrics I work with on a regular basis is the slightest bit fire-resistant.
3. The main fabric for Elisheba's dress is some kind of synthetic.  It feels more like nylon, but burned more like the cotton/polyester twill.  I didn't have any rayon scraps to burn, so cannot compare with that.  Tentative conclusion: nylon/polyester/unknown blended fiber.  It might be a satin weave, which would explain the shredding at raw edges.  
4. That was fun!  I learned stuff!  Let's do it again sometime when I can burn some real silk or wool!  I should take better notes!  Maybe take video!

Caturday Post: Sunny Cat

Sunny of coat, sunny of nature (mostly).

Sewing Tidbit: Pintucks vs Pleats

So apparently (i.e., after some quick internet reading) a pintuck is just a really narrow knife pleat that's stitched the entire length of the pleat.

Earlier this year I was reveling in discovering that there exist different kinds of pleats.  The internet is a wonderful thing.

Also one "how to make pintucks post" mentioned that there are 60/8 sewing machine needles, finer even than 70/10s.  I want them.  Wants them, my precious!  This past year I've been sewing with longer and longer stitches and almost exclusively my 70/10 needles and with some particularly troublesome fabrics have decided that simply using the finest needle I have works better than my ballpoint or stretch needles.