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Carnival Costumes

Carnival Floral Costumes

(just for a little bit of fun)

It seemed like such a sweet little project – use the Les Art Decoratif images as a background, do something fun but simple (time and money being of the essence) and what’s not more showy and flashy than some of the 18th century clothing out there!

And it was sweet, sweet to get the teeth into, sweet to design and imagine: a little
French costume plate - handbound costume research, carnival costume research, 18th century dresses, Georgian costume, pannier dresses for Court wear during the 18th century, elaborate rococo designed dressesfun project on the side for desert.

And because it was for me, each day it seemed to get pushed to the side more and more so that it was back to the old tradition of staying up and frantically sewing into the wee small hours of the various nights before and asking ‘why did I think this was a good idea?’

I’d love to have this page with flowers dotted about, some of the design drawings to the side and spreading out all over the computer screen, but we haven’t got that kind of page build up yet. It’s just a list of images but have fun looking at them, as that was the whole point!

1785 Les Arts Decoratif - HandBound Research, fashion plates of the 18th century, court wear for the late georgian period, fashions in high places, what people wore to Court, Antionette style clothing

One day we’ll make something as over the top and whacky as some of the fashion plates. There was just such an excess on trims and lace and flowers and fabric, truly gorgeous and sumptuous. Ours were a little more restricted!

Pink Carnival 18th.c - HandBound Costumes, 18th century inspired Carnival Costumes – The top layers of the dress were designed to be a satin with a matching organza layer over the top – you can see here the two being sewn together. This made up the bodice and the top skirt.

– The under skirts were of a contrasting Taffeta and had a rococo themed stencil spray painted on so that it would appear in the gap beneath the Top dress which was a key area in the fashion to be filled.

spraying - HandBound Carnival

From our pre-spray tests we actually opted for using the back of the sprayed motif as it wasn’t quite so bold and it had a nice marbled effect. The skirts were then needing to be lined so that the paint wouldn’t dust off onto the hoops. We made the skirts up first and then spent a happy afternoon, with neighbours popping their heads round to say hi, spraying the skirts.

carnival '14

 You can’t really see in the above image here, the green sprayed on motifs but we shall try to find another photo.

We made two dresses, a purple and a pink, both with the same floral trim and both matching one another in style. The pink one was made to fit a marge Fan Hoop while the purple was made to fit an Oblong Hoop.

Pink carnival - Fun historical Costumes

You can much better see the spray painted motifs in this photo. This was the back of the sprayed on motif and it gave a much more subtle effect.

carnival fun - handbound costumes