A partially finished pumpkin project (it isn't perfect but it is progress!)

You know the aphorism ‘perfection is the enemy of progress’ ? Turns out it is also the enemy of posting, as proven by the fact that I have not posted in the better part of a year. 

(Well, hopefully it wasn’t the better part, because that would not bode well for the remaining months of the year, but you know what I mean.) 

I have attempted to post! If it was the thought that counted I would have posted so many times. Back in July, I wrote a blog and edited a corresponding video that detailed my sewing projects for each month I have been absent. And then I just…didn’t post it. 

(Probably because of that whole ‘perfection is the enemy of progress’ thing.)

I will post it. Eventually. Like next week, maybe, but in the meantime, I’m going to ignore the fact that ten months have passed (oof) and talk about my Halloween projects as if everything is normal. 

(I guess not posting for months on end has been the ‘normal’ for the past few years, but I would like to also ignore that fact, thank you very much.) 

I went into October feeling…more confident than I probably should have, given my track record for this year so far (and last year, and the year before that). But in the past, I haven’t given much thought to my yearly pumpkin project or anything spookily festive until it was the first week of October. I would say that was the norm for a lot of years, where I successfully completed designs with those themes in mind. 

This year, I started thinking about them the first week of September. I was so ahead of schedule. 

(Ok, I didn’t have a schedule but if I did, I would have been ahead of it.)

I still didn’t really ‘settle’ on a precise design until much later into the month, but I had all of my materials before the calendar flipped over, and I had put an extreme amount of care and thought into possible designs. 

Not just a vague sort of idea, either. I had gathered hundreds of references and considered dozens of silhouettes and designs when it came to every element (sleeves, collar, skirts, etc.) I probably sketched out dozens of possibilities, too. I even made construction plans and illustrations of each layer. 

Compared to some years (see 2023) where I started at a sketchbook for all of October and failed to come up with any sort of concept, this felt like progress. And it definitely is. It’s just a shame that at the end of October, these designs are also still in progress instead of being perfect.

(Or I'd settle for finished, honestly...)

Alright, let’s talk about these designs. 

There are two. One with the typical pumpkin theming, and another that was meant to be "spooky" (ie, darker in color). Both of which have pretty unsubtle sources of inspiration. But! As unsubtle as these ideas may be, I haven’t seen anyone actually come up with them before me, either. And I looked through like three pages of google images, so that feels pretty conclusive.

Pumpkin Project: 

I’m not sure how this idea occurred to me, exactly, other than the obvious fact that it’s meant to look like a giant pumpkin and I have always called these seasonal projects pumpkin projects. 

Many of these past projects have included accessories or elements meant to resemble pumpkins—like the hat on an 18th-century ensemble, or the paned portions of a Renaissance costume.

I started sketching the back of a polonaise or bustle that had ruched swags that resembled a pumpkin. Then I expanded on that by extending the effect all the way around atop a 1850s silhouette. 

Then I was thinking about how the basque waist and classic design of 1840s-60s bodice could look like a stem. I’m not going to lie, I felt pretty brilliant when it came to this concept. 

I tested this by draping material over a hoopskirt, and right off the back, I felt it had promise. So I spent a couple of weeks fine-tuning the design and sourcing materials. 

I ultimately decided on an orange taffeta from my stash (the pumpkin), a brown velvet from my stash (the dirt), and a green lace (the leaves), with some green silk and brown lace from my stash worked in as well. 

Before I could begin on the skirt, I had to make the structure beneath it. I had an 1850s hoop that would work well for this, but it was kind of lumpy. Since I had so much time, I decided to alter it (and by that I mean completely reconstruct it, which I did incorrectly twice) so the shape was smoother. 

It was also too short. So I had to make a second hoop skirt of sorts to extend it specifically for this project. This has just two hoops near the hem and a wide ruffle between them. 

On top of that, there is an old cotton organdy petticoat. 

(I was happy with this at the time but before finishing this I might try to give it more "oomf" to better resemble my original sketch)

The bodice will be worn beneath an 1860s corset I finished earlier in the year (even though my references are more 1850s themed, prior to the elipticalization of hoopskirts). 

Now I could start draping my pumpkin skirt. I planned on doing this with very controlled gored panels that had a gathered overlay on top.

I liked this, but thought I preferred the volume and natural look of it when I roughly pinned the taffeta onto the dress form when conceptualizing this design. Because it seemed to have more vertical volume in a way that better resembled a pumpkin.

So I made many attempts to mimic the original “thrown on the dress form” look. I came up with something I was happy with, but oops, I didn’t have enough fabric to cut it out. 

(In hindsight, this was a blessing but it sure as hell didn’t feel like it at the time.)

So I spent like two days trying to shrink this pattern without sacrificing the look of it. The pattern was a behemoth with a bunch of darts and partially cut on the fabric's fold; it was so overcomplicated. 

After many mockups, I convinced myself I was happy with it, but…

There was a lot of variation in the drape of this design, which is part of what made it look natural, but how it was arranged over the lining after sewing it together had such an impact on its overall appearance that getting consistent results (even if the pattern and pleats were the same on each one) would be tricky.

It also kind of looked like—well, are you familiar with Georgia O’Keeffe’s works? Yeah…

After literal days of working on this, I realized I was overthinking it by a lot. The joy of this design was that a traditional ball gown already resembles a pumpkin, even if it isn’t exact. Which meant the most ball gown-esque design was probably the best design. 

(Wish I had realized that before wasting 6+ yards of mock-up material and like five days of time, but alas…)

Anyway, I decided to go back to my original pattern from day 1. 

Then I had to decide what to make these out of because I had ordered a silk taffeta in orange from a closeout sale online, which was higher quality than the poly taffeta I planned on using. So it was the obvious choice, but it read as very yellow on camera and didn’t have as stiff of a drape as the poly. 

When the green lace arrived, I thought that would make the choice obvious, but it didn’t. 

Instead, I kind of hated both options. Or just this combination in general. It felt like too much contrast, but also too busy, so adding more layers to diffuse things and improve the appearance felt…dubious. I had some chiffons and mesh fabrics that I played with, and wasn’t sold on any of them.

I ended up ordering two additional materials, but didn’t love these, either. 

Eventually, I found a combination I liked (which included using the more muted poly taffeta), but it, obviously, involved making the underskirt super complicated. 

Basically, I altered the lace to have these “cameo” frames of sorts and cut out the flower appliques.

When it came to what went inside the frames, that was a whole other thing. I settled on a brown lace overlay, which was a pain to add for many reasons I’ll get into in the video eventually. 

I planned on putting a bow inside each one—a bow constructed of brown lace and velvet ribbon, which were super tedious to make. But I ended up hating how that looked.

(I only realized this after spending a whole day making them.)

Instead, I decided flowers would look better, but there were no ready-made fabric flowers or appliques I could get in time that would even remotely match the colors in this project. 

The solution here? Cutting out hundreds of taffeta petals, melting the edges, gathering them into flowers, wrapping them with green remnants of lace, beading the centers, and covering millinery wire with the opaque parts of the lace to create stems. 

Easy peasy.

Don’t ask me how many hours I spent on these. It would have to be measured in literal days. Like I worked on them for days, but also more than 24 hours went into these, which is so stupid, but it is what it is. 

The bottom part of the skirt is a velvet ruffle with a partial mesh overlay and cotton lining. A beaded trim was hand sewn onto the seam between the fabrics, and ribbon sits just below that.

I made marks every 12” along the top edge (which was more than 8yds long) and gathered the portions between each mark down to 6”. 

It was then sewn to horsehair braid to secure the gathers, and then sewn to the green section by hand, with green beads incorporated in each stitch.

There are a lot of things I’m leaving out here, like how the mesh had to be hand basted to the velvet twice….after ripping out the wonky machine stitches from the entire 8yd length.  And the fact that it was too short, so I had to lengthen the upper section that suspends it in place…and a bunch of other random crap, too. 

At least the overskirt was well behaved. Except no, it wasn’t. It didn’t have a lot of shape and was too loose overtop of the underskirt. I had to add bands beneath it to take it in and extra rows of gathering. It was a big pain. 

Now, at this point, I was 3 weeks into October, and I still did not have a bodice. But how hard could the bodice be? 

Quite hard, actually…

I assembled it all wrong (wasting two days) the first time, then started over with a different construction method entirely. This was better, but the nature of the fabrics I was using made it complicated, and a lot of hand stitching/securing beads after sewing seams had to be done. 

I also had to make sleeves in this time frame, too, which are supposed to look like little pumpkins. The “stem” will connect them to the collar, and leaves will sprout from it. Or that was my plan, I didn’t quite get there in the end.

Right now, when generously pinned to a dress form it looks like a dress! 

But in order to finish it, there are a few things to do…

The underskirt : Back seam, attaching flowers, waistband, hook/eye closure. 

The overskirt : Sew to the bodice.

The sleeves :  Sew to bodice, add cuffs once I know where it sits on the arm.

The collar : Shoulder seams, sew to bodice, finish attaching appliques, sew on trim (?)

The bodice : Side seams, sewing one side of binding on bottom edge, handsewing beads up to the line of the binding after it is sewn, back closures. 

But hey, I can pin it into something resembling the final product on the dress form, and that is something. Not enough, really, but better than nothing. 

Overall, I’m very pleased with how obvious the pumpkin illusion is. I like how the fabrics look together a lot, too, but man, it was a process getting there. All the planning in the world can’t make up for how fabric looks in reality, unfortunately.  

I was also so set on this design that I didn’t want to compromise at all, which made everything take longer since I often had to redo things before I was happy with them. It was a drastic (and welcome) change from my flimsy/nonexistent design ideas from a couple years ago, but not one that lent itself well to quick construction.

(The alternate aphorism, 'perfect is the enemy of good' comes to mind. I just like having a lot of enemies, I guess.)

Okay, design 2. This is the spooky one with a darker palette. AKA: The Batpplique Dress, because I find that fun to say out loud.

This idea was inspired by these batppliques—and by that I mean these lace curtains with a bat shape. I thought immediately that it resembled a bertha collar in terms of shape and bought four of them (as you do).  

Keeping with the bat theme, I thought the shape of bat wings would make a kickass train. So I sought out references for a period that could possibly have both a batwing train and a bertha collar. 

I gathered like a hundred fashion plates from the late 1870s to the early 1880s that could work for this, and debated a lot about the silhouette. And then I decided the bustle kind of got in the way of my vision, so I shifted focus to the silhouette seen in the late 1860s and early 1870s instead. 

A bonus to this was that I could theoretically fit this bodice and my pumpkin one at the same time since they used the same corset (but different hoopskirts).  Obviously, that didn’t work out…

I also feel like this design is more original in this silhouette, since there are late victorian fancy dress costumes based on bats, and this separates it further from those (even though they are amazing, too, they are just so amazing that a lot of people have recreated them). 

I didn’t get very far on this design, since I realized in mid-October that finishing both of these projects was not going to be possible. I still had hope one of them would be, so I switched focus to the pumpkin. But for the first week or two I did have fun switching between these two very different designs.

This project is a real test of texture and handling frustrating fabrics. 

For example, this front panel is constructed from chiffon with velvet facings, lace/beaded/stretch rhinestone overlays, and trimmed with both mesh ruffles and satin/velvet pleated trim.  

The other elements will be just as complicated when I get to them, probably, like a ruffle constructed from another curtain, which is trimmed by hand with mesh ruffles and green seed beads. 

The collar will be lined with silver mesh, and the sides of the skirt will be made from ruched silk with a black mesh overlay to dull the color. 

I am very excited about this, but the progress I can share is still minimal given that it is still in pieces. I have the underskirt drafted, but I can’t actually construct it until other elements are finished. For example, the swag seen above is inserted in the seam securing the green mesh panels to the centerback panel. 

I don’t have as much to say about this design since I haven’t made enough progress to run into major problems. So I still have that to look forward to. 

Hopefully, this can get finished in November, when people are not in a spooky mood necessarily but are instead suffering from the beginning stages of SAD, which has a lot of parallels! 

(Kidding. Mostly. November is not a cheerful month, okay?) 

So. That is how I spent my October. I’m not going to lie, I’m really frustrated that neither of these got finished. Especially the pumpkin dress. I think I spent at minimum 6 hours sewing for 28/31 days in the month, and many days it was much longer than that (like, numerous nights awake at 2AM stringing flower petals).

There were obviously issues with this and some extremely detailed elements that were time-consuming, but I’m still not sure how that amount of time and effort didn’t result in actually finishing this dress. 

There are definitely some months where I don’t put in the hours or don’t have the materials and inspiration to ‘deserve’ finishing anything, I guess. But this month I had what I needed, and I put in so much work and I tried really hard, and yet…

It is very discouraging, and I’m really sick of just…failing, I guess, when it comes to finishing things and meeting deadlines and everything else.

It’s disappointing on a personal and creative level, you know? And sometimes it feels like posting will just lead to disappointing other people, too, and disappointing myself is bad enough already. So I just don't post at all, which feels like a failing of a different sort, and I'm not really sure how to fix it, or myself, though god knows I'm trying.

So, that is my October update. The January-August update will follow soon. Maybe. Hopefully.

I hope you all had a good Halloween and that unlike mine, your costumes were finished on time! 

Thanks for reading, 

Angela