Yesterday I was worried that I wasn't going to have enough fabric to do the trimmeries on the LACMA sacque, but today, oddly enough, I think it will all be okay. Here's where I am currently:
There are a lot of pins holding stuff on, but this is one of my favorite stages of costume development - mocking up the whole thing to get an idea how it will look when complete.
The trim on the original is quite loose. It appears to be shallowly pleated, with puffs that have since deflated or been pressed flat. The silver gimp-y-stuff appears to have been pleated with the fabric, which gives it a nice three dimensional texture.
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| The original dress, closeup of the trims, stomacher, sleeves. |
I didn't achieve this organized-chaos look on the half-a-stomacher I trimmed last night, but I plan to give it a shot on the other edge trims.
My silver trims aren't metallic - I've spray-painted various laces and whatnots. This is my favorite costuming hack, but this time I've learned that base color makes a big difference - the gimpy stuff started out shiny metallic gold, which when spray over with silver remained sparkly and lovely, but not too strong. The black lace in this picture, however, when sprayed over silver, just went kindof gunmetal and rather dull when paired with the gown.
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| The trims, pre-spray paint. I may only end up using one of these. |
There's one more element that's giving me troubles - the deep silver flounce on the skirt. I tried some lace fabric sprayed silver, but I think the design is too dense. Finding a wide piece of metallic lace is going to be both difficult and expensive, so I'm thinking I might do something else for that flounce or omit it completely.
Experiments!
