In a message dated 4/29/2006 12:04:41 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
One problem that can cause droopy sleeve puffs is that the shoulders might be a little too wide, the sleeves should start more on the shoulder rather than at or after the turn of the shoulder, that helps keep them from drooping. ***************** Indeed. Helps distinguish them from the large Gigot sleeves of the 1830s which do spring from off the shoulder. But since photography was off and running even before the 1890s, you can see in photographs all manner of droopy and perky and everything in between in sleeves. There's a fondness for structure in the 1890s...stiff fabrics and heavy trims held up by complex underpinnings. The skirt in the pattern sorta suffers from not being manipulated enough. I can't tell if she even has a petticoat. It seems a little too clingy in the hips and not full enough...things that do indeed start to happen as the decade wears on. In Janet Arnold you see the circular cut of the back of the skirts, achieved in several ways. Sometimes it is a big circle or semicircle cut out as one piece even if the fabric needs piecing to get a large enough width to do so. Sometimes it is gored. This is sewn to a front panel that is shaped to the hips. the whole thing is usually stiffened with something. In Arnold it says buckram....sometimes innerlining the lower half of the front gore and all of the back of the skirt. I've dressed extras in real 1890s stuff where the skirt practically stands on its own. As you move towards the turn of the century, the stiffness starts to wane and you end up at that droopy, flowing silhouette in light fabrics of the 1900s. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
