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I wore my domino to the George Washington ball in Williamsburg at the beginning of the month. It was so much fun to wear. It wouldn't have worked if it had really been cold, but it wasn't too chilly out so we didn't really need to wrap up for the short distance from the car to the ballroom.
The pattern is published in Period Costume for Stage and Screen and based on a pink domino in the collection at the V&A. I tried to get Janet Arnold's article on it from Costume through ILL, but while I was told that it was in the mail two weeks after I requested it, I got a notice the day I got back from Virginia five weeks later that they couldn't find a library willing to loan it. By then I had given up on getting it in time to use it for my domino so I did my best with the pictures at the V&A and their description as well as the pattern from the book. It's nice that the pictures are fairly detailed; I was able to see that the trim on the hanging sleeves is tacked on with very small stitches on the right side and very large stitches on the back side.
It took ten yards plus about 7" in width of another two yards of black silk taffeta 36" wide. I tore it down to 26" and then used the remaining 10" width for gores and trim. There are over 20 yards of trim, but I'm not sure exactly how much. I stopped tracking it after a bit. I did make two conscious changes to the trim from the original - 1) I didn't cut the strips into scalloped scallops, just straight scallops with a pair of scalloped pinking shears, and 2) I didn't cut any strips in sloped widths, just different widths for the different rows of trim. It would have driven me nuts to try to cut the scallops without having one of the special tools. Actually, even with my level of patience for the tedious, I think I would have run out long before I finished cutting more than 30 yards of fabric strips with one of the tools...on both sides no less.
Most of the body was machine sewn, but all the trim was gathered with whip gathers and sewn on by hand.
( And now pictures )
The pattern is published in Period Costume for Stage and Screen and based on a pink domino in the collection at the V&A. I tried to get Janet Arnold's article on it from Costume through ILL, but while I was told that it was in the mail two weeks after I requested it, I got a notice the day I got back from Virginia five weeks later that they couldn't find a library willing to loan it. By then I had given up on getting it in time to use it for my domino so I did my best with the pictures at the V&A and their description as well as the pattern from the book. It's nice that the pictures are fairly detailed; I was able to see that the trim on the hanging sleeves is tacked on with very small stitches on the right side and very large stitches on the back side.
It took ten yards plus about 7" in width of another two yards of black silk taffeta 36" wide. I tore it down to 26" and then used the remaining 10" width for gores and trim. There are over 20 yards of trim, but I'm not sure exactly how much. I stopped tracking it after a bit. I did make two conscious changes to the trim from the original - 1) I didn't cut the strips into scalloped scallops, just straight scallops with a pair of scalloped pinking shears, and 2) I didn't cut any strips in sloped widths, just different widths for the different rows of trim. It would have driven me nuts to try to cut the scallops without having one of the special tools. Actually, even with my level of patience for the tedious, I think I would have run out long before I finished cutting more than 30 yards of fabric strips with one of the tools...on both sides no less.
Most of the body was machine sewn, but all the trim was gathered with whip gathers and sewn on by hand.
( And now pictures )
