For hours, upon hours, I spent my time trying to find a good image of 1910's beading on gowns. I wanted to find a design from the period, to keep it authentic as possible. Well, I had very little luck finding anything with any real detail to help me. There are lots of great pictures of garments, but none close enough to see it! The best I was able to procure were pictures like this:
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| All to small.... |
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| ...to be of... |
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| ...any help. |
I even checked out beading patterns for purses, I wasn't able to find a design/motif from the period that I really liked. So I used a postcard for "inspiration" and proceeded created my own design. I just wanted a hint of the pink beads and used mainly the green and pale turquoise, like in the postcard.
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| The Wonderful Postcard. |
I had never done beading before and I found that it's certainly not a
hard thing to do. But it is
TIME CONSUMING. Lucky I had Netflix because I watched the entire season of Firefly, plus the movie, Serenity, and the 2nd season of LOST to finish both sleeves.
Before I applied the beads, I finished all the edges with a "chiffon hem" It really helped keeping it from fraying and looked nice too. Then I did the beading before sewing the arm 'round because the fabric was flattest and easiest to work with. And BAM!
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| Here's the motif I created |
Then I finished off the sleeves with French Seams.
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| First run with French Seams! |
And Voila! Pretty sleeves! I'm really happy with them, they lay nicely (just like in the design picture) and to my delight, the colors are far more muted than I was expecting! My mom took some great detail photos, too. Yay Momma!
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| Doesn't wicker furniture make wonderful scenery? |
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| A pretty feather. I think I'm most proud of this one. |
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| Not exactly matching garments, but the sleeve lays nicely. |
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| Lilies... that don't really look like lilies... |
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| :D |
it looks wonderful!! I can't wait to see the finished dress.
ReplyDeleteDid you try to get the photo on MET Museum website because you can use zoom on the photos.
Nereida
Wow - that's some impressive beading!
ReplyDeleteI actually have a few pieces of teens beading, including an amazing pair of detachable chiffon sleeves with beading.
I'll blog about them at some point with tons of pictures so that next time you go to do this research you have some help ;-)
My examples are all in black, white or metallics, and they are all much less figural than your beading, but there does seem to have been a huge amount of variety out there, so I bet some teens seamstress (beader? beadstress?) would have done something similar to yours!