Halloween Costume Series Bonus: The Vampire’s Black and Purple Regency Ballgown with Black Lace and Silver Sash

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Now, I like the Good Queen as much as anyone, but the vampire always was one of my two favorites ever since she was drawn. (The other was the gypsy girl, who didn’t make it into the finals even though she has the cutest embroidery on the hem of ther skirt.) So the Good Queen took an early lead, but the vampire was always close behind, catching up right near the end, and when I got back from Thanksgiving festivities she had won with a respectable lead, 28 votes to 22 (with Undead Marie in third place with 15 and Christine last with 12). I think the Good Queen must be furious, but as promised, here’s a victory gown for the vampire.

I saw her gown as being an undefined Regency style, so here’s a ballgown in the same vein (I’m sorry, I can’t help myself). I don’t think it’s nearly as good as the first one, but it’s not bad. I’m tempted to do extra outfits for all of the finalists, as I’ve become quite fond of them, and now I have a proper pencil sharpener I bet a good ghostly court dress would be fuuuuun, and not the slog that Undead Marie’s gown was.

Khaki Trench Coat with Green Dress and Grey Boots in honor of Different Chairs and justweather.com

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So my husband’s business is called Different Chairs, and he does a lot of different things, but chief among them is web development using Django. He has been helping put together a new weather site, JustWeather.com, which just officially launched the other day. What’s so great about another weather site, you ask? Well, it shows real-time, helpful weather information, it has great animated maps that you can enlarge and it doesn’t have a lot of other information cluttering up the screen — just weather, right? Frankly, it has more weather information than most decent humans want to know, and my dear husband has been living and breathing weather for months now. (There’s a reason our new cat is named Radar. She narrowly escaped being called “Haircast.”)

So, in honor of Brian and the weather site, Sylvia and Iris can now brave weather in a cute short khaki trench coat, although you wouldn’t want to brave too much weather in a skirt like that, I guess!

The Good Queen’s undead nemesis seems to be catching up…

Liz Patterson’s Final Wedding Dress with Teal and Lavender Roses from For Better or For Worse

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Since my 1940s wedding dress attached to a rant on For Better or For Worse is one of the more popular dresses on the blog, I feel like I should bring the saga to a close. Dee ended up altering the supposedly sixty-something-year old dress into something reasonably modern, the Ghost of Grandma made up for fanciful logic on the part of the cartoonist, the flowers were hideous and Liz ended up marrying that creep. All the way up until the vows were said I was hoping Liz would come to her senses, but immediately after that scene I was so over the whole thing, as evidenced by my putting off the dress for four months. If the end of the saga was boring its weird rebirth is mind-numbingly dreary, although sometimes I visit the Foobiverse!’s Journal out of nostalgia and their second-hand psychoanalysis of Lynn is amusing at times. I still follow Foob’s Paradise, though, which is a webcomic that continues the Pattersons’ adult lives.

Since I get so many search queries related to weddings, I’m thinking of doing some sort of “wedding week” perhaps, maybe after Christmas. If you have any pictures of wedding dresses you just love, feel free to post links in the comments so I can get inspired!

The Good Queen is so far holding her own over the other dead queen and the rest of her competitors. She would say that’s only the way things should be, but it’s not over yet. I will do a bonus costume or two for whoever wins, so if you adore one of them get your vote in, send your friends over, post to your weblog and beg your readers to vote for your favorite!

White Gown and Corset with Peach Embroidered Inset from Taylor Swift’s Love Story

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Now I don’t really listen to country music, possibly because I fear being disowned by my dad, who says if he starts to listen to it of his own volition, we will all know he’s gone senile. Still, when Janel wrote about a beautiful dress that she was helping a young friend reproduce, it was almost a foregone conclusion that it’d end up on my blog, even if it did come from a country music song. It’s called Love Story by Taylor Swift, and I think it’s a lovely music video even if I am getting teased by Brian about it.

Since she spends almost all her time in this dress standing behind a balcony, and because I’m watching the video on YouTube, I can’t really tell how the skirt looks; the corset should be about right, but the skirt is more of a guess. From this photo it seems to have some interesting construction going on, but that’s just about the only picture I can find with the full skirt. (The arial view in the video doesn’t count, but it does give away that there is a longer train on the real thing than on the paperdoll. Unfortunately, while her costume designers likely have access to yards and yards of fabric, a proper train would have run off the side of my paper. Paper Dolls 1, Real Life 1.) Should anyone else wish to reference it, I used these two pictures when drawing the corset.

I’m glad there’s no clear winner in the poll yet, it makes the Grand Halloween Showdown so much more fun…

Bella Swan’s Hyacinth Blue Prom Dress from Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

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So I read Twilight a while back, after reading about how it was the hot new thing for starry-eyed young girls and their unappreciated mothers. (I had to go through a waiting list of about 114 people for it, too.) I admit that I enjoyed it, in the same way I’ll admit to liking Naruto — it’s definitely shallow, artless wish-fulfillment, but that straightforwardness in and of itself makes it rather sweet. Also, Edward reminds me of Brian in one respect, in that he’s always teasing me about something or another. Beyond that the comparisons are few, but between me and Bella, I’ve got the better guy.

The criticisms of the book depicting really lousy relationship behaviors as desirable, Bella and Edward being Mary Sue characters (e.g. entirely perfect — clumsiness is not a character flaw, thank you), Bella being a moron (I don’t agree with that one, I felt like she was depicted as a book-smart, classics-reading, aloof old soul) and so forth have been addressed at length elsewhere, I’m sure, so I’ll stick to what I know — what? no good dress descriptions? Bella is always wearing things like jeans and flannel, or a brown turtleneck or some such monstrosity. What’s the fun of a proper vampire romance if you’re wearing flannel? The only fancy dress she gets comes in at the end, and isn’t very well described besides being hyacinth blue and off the shoulder. On Stephenie Myers’ website is a cut first draft of the dressing for prom scene, in which the dress gets a little more attention. It wouldn’t work for my paperdolls since I don’t do see-through fabric (so Sylvia and Iris, as well as any other skin colors I draw, can both wear anything), but even if I did, even after much musing on the relevant paragraph, I’m not sure quite what to make of the description. Mostly I’m stuck on the sash at the waist, which is “paled-flowered, hyacinth fabric, that pleated together to form a thin ruffle down the left side” and then goes on to be long at the back and open at the front. Rosalie calls it haute couture, and given that a lot of haute couture is a little beyond me too, maybe the problem is on my side after all. But anyways, that dress is merely from the first draft; I decided on my own version for the paperdoll. For that is the appeal, after all, to put yourself in the heroine’s shoes and stunning gown, imagining yourself the target of slavish devotion from the perfect man. I like it that way, because a quick search through DeviantArt will show as many Bella prom dresses as there are Twilight fanartists, all the way from “her dad wouldn’t let her out of the house wearing that” to full-on medieval princess. Even the movie’s version looks nothing like the others. Me, I envisioned the dress as somewhere between a 1950s party dress and something out of Gone With The Wind, and so that’s what we have here.

I probably won’t go see the movie - I’ve got enough vampirism in my own house.

Anyways! I think the last two polls are pretty clearly over, so let’s start the Grand Halloween Showdown!

Gold Satin 1814 Regency Gown with White Embroidery from Persuasion by Jane Austen

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Upon reflection I really think the previous white regency gown has to go to someone like Louisa Musgrove, so I just had to draw one that would suit Anne a little better because she totally got robbed. So here’s a gown that’s a shade more sober than the white one, eminently suitable for playing the piano in while everyone else dances. The embroidery and satin only go so far in soothing a sad heart, but I like to think they’re worth a little something.

Why yes, I do love my new pencil sharpener, however did you notice?

So the latest poll is open for a few days yet, but it has a very clear winner, while this poll just has a couple of days to go and the competition is fierce. Don’t forget to vote in it! Soon we will have the Halloween Costume Battle Royale, too.

1814 White Lace Trimmed Regency Gown with Sheer Overskirt and Pink Shawl from Persuasion by Jane Austen

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Persuasion was one of the audiobooks I listened to earlier this year (again, from Librivox); it’s set starting in 1814, but the time, rather than the book, influenced this dress. Since it’s white, it’s probably considered too young a color for the book’s heroine, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a pure white Regency gown and it sure was fun to draw. This one might as well be titled “Liana Has A New Pencil Sharpener,” really. My old one was probably around eight years old, no wonder it took about two minutes and lots of coaxing to get a point inferior to the ones my new sharpener produces in seconds. It shows, too. Look forwards to a lot of lace in whatever I do next.

I looked at so many sites when thinking about how this dress should be, I can’t list them all, but pemberley.com, the Regency Fashion Page and Jessamyn’s Regency Costume Companion are the ones I noted down for later, so if you have any interest in Regency fashion please take a look at them.

We’re reaching the end of the Halloween costume polls. You haven’t forgotten about them already, have you?

Laura’s Blue and White 1870s Victorian Day Dress from J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla

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So yesterday I did the vampire Carmilla’s bloody nightgown, and then I got to thinking how unfair it was that she got all the attention and long-suffering Laura got none. As a matter of fact, I can’t even remember Laura’s name without referring to Wikipedia or my previous entry. Face it, you really have to pile on the lace to make mild victims as interesting as seductive vampire women in bloody nightgowns. And so pile I did, and here is a dress from 1870 that Laura might have worn. To be honest, even though as near as I can tell 1870 is an accurate enough date for the book’s setting, I thought long and hard about going back a few years for inspiration. After all, Laura and her father lived in a castle in Germany in the middle of nowhere and who knows how well Laura kept up with English fashion in between vampire ravishings. But then I thought, she was still a growing girl and if her dresses were two or three years old, maybe she’d have outgrown them and wouldn’t be wearing anything that old? Maybe since her father is sort of vaguely rich, she orders a lot of new dresses? Maybe she spends a lot of time remaking her dresses referring to whatever fashion news she can get, because life in an isolated castle is so boring? So I over-thought this until I got fed up and tried to make an 1870s style day dress anyways, like I had initially planned. Since it’s not a copy of any one dress, it’s probably not historically accurate (I definitely have my misgivings about the way the overskirt turned out) but oh well, it was sure fun to draw.

New poll tomorrow, but this one will remain open for a few days yet…

One Last Dress from My Fair Lady and Two Dresses from Titanic from Liana’s Paper Doll Boutique

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My apologies, my time management skills have been lacking the last couple of days! So, here are a couple of Boutique dresses instead, and I will draw something new tomorrow. I’m glad I worked on the Boutique so diligently all that time ago, it’ll be a while before I run out of things to post. Anyways, these are the green dress from My Fair Lady and the beaded gown and boarding dress from Titanic.

The other poll is still going to be open for a few days, but I also want to move on to the next batch…

Halloween Costume Series Day 20: Halloween Themed 1700s French Court Dress with Orange Bows and Spider Lace

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Now, I actually don’t believe in ghosts, but if Marie Antoinette walks the earth still, I like to think she has something like this to comfort her. It would certainly comfort me, not that I intend to become a ghost. Just think, if one was a ghost and wearing panniers one wouldn’t have to turn sideways to go through a door anymore! Thanks to Antoinette’s Closet for inspiration.

In any case, thank you everyone for following my costume month. My goal was to do one a day, and I got 20 done (plus one Hinawa, and a couple of Boutique posts) which isn’t bad. I hope those of you who aren’t really all that into Halloween didn’t get too bored, and I hope that those of you who do enjoy Halloween liked some of my costumes and are enjoying yourself in some fashion tonight.

So, now I want to know which one was everyone’s favorite. We’ll do this in four parts, with part 1 today and closing in two days…