Costume College is a really fun convention which is mostly made up of historical costuming classes. There are photo lectures on various historic garment subjects as well as hands-on classes to learn how to make various clothing. If you want to see previous 2011 Costume College photos or 2009 Costume College photos, try here. You also might enjoy seeing my photos from the Petite Trianon 18th century event here.
This year had a theme of “The Golden Age of Hollywood: 1930-1955” so a fair amount of people dressed in fashion from these decades both during the day for classes and during the evening for events. I was totally charmed by it because I’ve been more interested in vintage fashion lately, especially from these decades. (In fact, if I hadn’t been pregnant, I would have tried to make a whole set of outfits from those periods! Maybe next year!)
One of my classes was making an “easy” Lunardi hat. (Late 18th century, early 19th century). And it was easy! We almost got totally done with the hat in the class and I learned how to trim the edge of a straw hat, which I’d tried before and had a really hard time with.
We also got a good start on the buckram underform for a vintage Vogue hat.
At the delicious Icecream Social…
Judy in her saree-made Edwardian
Katherine (left)
AJ in her Regency
Loren‘s Sherlock Holmes fushia Victorian
AJ in her Regency
Miriam‘s Victorian
My white striped voile regency.
Me and AJ showing off our Regency pregnancy gowns.
For Saturday, I had a fair amount of classes. I wore my new cotton 60’s maternity dress that I made from a vintage 1968 pattern. Judy did my hair up!
Studying an extant Edwardian lace gown in class.
One of the 1880’s handcrank machines we used in the Edwardian lace gown class!
Me piecing together french lace on the handcrank machine in my 60’s maternity outfit.
I’m planning on putting together an heirloom baby dress with the lace blocks I started in class. I used a christening gown pattern from my Aunt Pat as the base and some leftover really nice pink cotton batiste as the main fabric. The laces are french and swiss.
On to the Gala!
Annie, Judy, Miriam, Aj and me.
I made a saree overgown to go over my white striped voile regency so that I could get two looks out of one dress. More info here.
AJ‘s Chinese Tang Dynasty gown.
Judy‘s 18th century!
Miriam‘s Regency
Katherine and AJ
Our table at the Gala
There was a live period band this year! Charming!
The back of AJ‘s head. 🙂
Kim
There was a group of ladies who all used the same bolt of burgundy fabric to make several dresses all from different time periods! This was the 18th century lady.
Another from the same group.
Loren in her adorable Victorian Bee Gown
Nala and Belle done 18th century style.
Nala and Belle done 18th century style.
Kendra‘s Hollywood B&W Marie Antoinette
(American Duchess)‘s Nevada outfit
18th century Belle again
18th century Cinderella
Alyxx‘s Victorian Nightsky gown
Chris‘s amazing embroidered and spangled 18th century suit. (I want one in pink, please!)
Some beautiful costumes from the costume exhibit. (All of these are by Costume College attendees.)
Gorgeous saree Victorian
An adorable cotton 18th century
such cute ribbon embroidery!
piece of Kathy’s peacock dress
I took a class with some ideas on how to use your modern embroidery sewing machine on historical gowns and got lots of great ideas!
I also took a silk ribbon embroidery class. This was one of the teacher’s samples.
This is the bit of ribbon embroidery that I did in the class. 🙂 It was actually really easy! I can see a lot of ribbon embroidery in my future, in particular while I’m stuck on bedrest with the twins.
Oh gosh, I love the variety of historical clothing eras all in one place!
Great photos Aimee! It was so nice to see you last week. I really love your silk ribbon embroidery, and hope you post photos of your heirloom baby dress. Sending good vibes!