Commemorating A Centennial

This past weekend, The Commonwealth Vintage Dancers held a World War I ball to commemorate the centennial of the start of the first world war. It was a truly lovely evening, with wonderful people who were enthusiastic dancers (the floor was never empty!), rousing music, and yummy refreshments. The ball also provided a great opportunity to make some changes to the dress I made for a 1914 performance earlier this spring.

When I first threw the dress together, I ended up getting some bits wrong--namely, the brocade draping on the bust and the waist seam. I meant for the whole side bodice to be covered in green, but ended up cutting too far over and exposing a lot of the white, and then stitching the waist too high so that the dress ended up being quite the contortionist act to get on and off. This is what happens when you sew at 4am, I suppose...

But the lucky thing about draping is that I didn't actually cut the bodice piece as I was sewing it down--I just folded the extra corner underneath. Which meant that once I ripped out all the stitches, there was enough of the piece to extend around the bodice to where I'd originally wanted the draping to go. I also re-did the opening on the waist so that it no longer requires dislocating both shoulders to change. There are still some little changes I want to make (like tacking on the bronze waistband), but for the most part this is now done in a way I'm happy with. Hooray!

examining the roses

the re-draped over bodice

 I wanted to try something new with my hair, so I drew inspiration from some of the 1914 cone-shaped styles.

wedding hairstyles, 1914

la coiffure francaise, 1914

a write-up of dance dresses, 1914

 I achieved the look mainly with my own hair, but I padded out the crown with a couple of rats to give it a more distinct cone shape. The decoration was some gold lace from the stash.

It was such a lovely evening that I didn't take many pictures because I was too busy dancing...but here are a few!

animal dances were all the rage in the 1910s, but I don't think the "penguin" was one of them...

I couldn't resist including the fabulous frozen fruit/ice cube!

a "paul jones" mixer, where partners are changed throughout the dance at the sound of a whistle