I’m sure it’s a common thing for many people in the surge of creative motivation to pick up a long and daunting project only to lose steam after a the first few hundred stitches, cuts, knits, purls, etc. I personally make a perfect poster child for such a demographic. I get excited about new projects with great rapidity. An idea will strike my fancy and I will pursue it diligently … for the first few days or so.
Then something will happen: I’ll hit a frustrating obstacle, get distracted by work or social obligations, or simply get bored and whatever I happen to be doing will simply fall to the wayside. If I’m really inspired, I’ll pick it up again in a week or two when I have a chance. This rarely happens. Most of the time it will sit on my sewing table or my dresser or hanging off the ironing board until a monthly clean will see it folded and put it away in a drawer somewhere. Wherever I live, I usually keep a drawer whose unofficial name is “to-do when I get around to it-drawer”. Needless to say, it rarely gets opened.
Quitting my job in the oilfield this past April seemed to have a beneficial effect on my productivity, and while my two weeks’ notice were ticking by I dug through my then 3 accrued “to-do when I get around to it” drawers and pulled out the mother of all set-aside projects. There is a lot of background story that goes with this mother, so now might be a good time to make yourself comfortable.
Back in 2006 I was ill-advisedly talked into costume designing the MIT Musical Theatre Guild’s summer production of Sweeney Todd entirely in “steampunk” Victorian era, years before I even knew what “steampunk” meant. In addition to waistcoats, cravats, blouses and petticoats, I constructed six or seven full Victorian gowns complete with gi-normous bustles and big, poufy trains.
photo credit Jax Kirtley
This show involved more construction than nearly all the rest of my productions combined, and I recruited my assigned costume crew, talented friends, and random freshmen just arrived on campus to help me get it all done in time. Eventually, and after very little sleep the costumes were finished, the show looked beautiful, and my mind quickly turned to considering projects for myself.
I had enjoyed costuming Sweeney Todd for the practice it gave me in constructing period Victorian outfits. I kept the dress pattern I used, and with the “bustle pillow” the entire cast had signed and presented to me for my crew-member gift, I had the beginning pieces to make a full dress of my own. Hours of shopping later, I had a full set of fabrics, linings, lace and tasseled edgings, and all the notions necessary to make a beautiful costume.
It was almost a surprise it took me as long as it did to set this project aside. I worked on it continuously throughout the month of September, and finished the most difficult part that month: the bodice. It was roughly that time that the school semester got busy, so months passed before I made an attempt to pick up where I had left off. Most of the big pieces were partially assembled, like the bodice (minus the sleeves), but none were actually completed.
When I moved out of my apartment in Somerville and into the student housing in Boston, it came with me and wasn’t touched. When I moved down to Louisiana after graduation it came with me and wasn’t touched. I bought a whole new set of plastic storage drawers to contain it and the remainder of my forgotten projects and there it sat in my closet in Lafayette for years.
With my oodles of free time I had all the tools I needed to pull that mother back out of her drawer. Components had been lost, and pieces had been confused, but I managed to take stock of what I had and what I needed.
I began by fixing the confounding petticoat. A long-lost memory emerged from the ether, and I remembered that I had set the petticoat aside after realizing that I had (again) sewed a pair of the panels in upside-down. I ripped them out, realigned them, and proceeded to sew them in … upside-down … again. I ripped them out one more time, laid them on the floor and thought about them for a good, long while. I then went about checking and rechecking each piece, and then writing “top” and “bottom” on each petticoat panel and then checking the labels one more time for good measure. I sewed them in one last time, and what do you know it but I finally got it right!
I then sewed the sleeves on the bodice and got to have the fun job of embellishing it with all the frilly lacy scrumptiousness I had held on to for such a purpose. Extra fabric from the bustle and apron remnants provided the perfect contrast for the decorative buttons down the front.
I completed the skirt and embellished it similarly to the bodice. I put together the bustle and the apron draperies, and installed the hardware necessary to hold them in place. Bit by bit everything was coming together until before I knew it, one sunny day in April I was finished!
And of course, dressing up ensued and many photographs were taken.
My sister was scandalized by this last photo, since I was clearly a Victorian prostitute with my lack of stockings and bloomers. So I made sure to have those ready for my gown's unveiling at Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts.
Amongst the denizens of Salem, my huge bustle was a big hit!
Ahh, the glory of it all.
But it wouldn’t have been a real procrastination project if I hadn’t procrastinated many months more before posting this description of it, sigh.
