What Era is This Shirt From? (Or, Outfitting a Zombie)

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So we always do weird/ time-consuming stuff for Halloween, and we're getting started. Sozlet wants to be a zombie. I have this old lace shirt that I bought at a garage sale at some point and is pretty beat-up. I won't be using it for anything else, so it's the starting point for the zombie costume. She likes the idea of being of an era, not just a random collection of clothes. I can sew pretty much whatever around this shirt.

Not a great pic, I can get a better one if need be:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d130/sozobe/IMG00127.jpg

lace close-up:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d130/sozobe/IMG00128.jpg

I'm thinking 1920's-1930's?

I have some "antique" silk saris that have been dragged through Calcutta gutters and can be put to good use, if appropriate. Not sure if it would be appropriate though.

The costume should be for a woman of the era, not a girl her age (8). It'll get beat up if I start from new, then she'll have pale skin, darkened eyes, and leaves in her hair. Plus maybe a suppurating wound or rotting flesh, we don't know yet how scary we want to be. Smile

Starting with the clothes.

Thanks!

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Soz, have you seen the book "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"? It's set in the Austen era (sorry, whatever that is) and featured Zombies. It might be fun for Sozlet to do the poofed skirt, fitted bodice and fancy up-do hair style.

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@littlek,

I have seen that, yep! That would be cool, I agree. I like the idea of wild hair though (hers is very long), but it could be like mostly out of an updo. Seeing as how she had to claw her way through all that dirt 'n' all.

The first picture is worse than I expected at that size, just took another with a different camera:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d130/sozobe/shirt.jpg

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Look, this girl wears something similar...

http://image14.webshots.com/15/6/4/30/338760430sEjgTT_ph.jpg

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@sozobe,

Very pretty lacy shirt, love it. When I saw the first picture I thought that the shirt was fairly recent, nineties or early aughts, but seeing this clearer photo.. now I don't know. Is it stretchy at all? (recent). Anyway, it could pass for olden days, far away, with zombies galore galumphing in the dark.

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@ossobuco,

This does remind me of the person that first introduced me to thrift store fun - now a tenured prof who I presume still sneaks away to thrifts from time to time.
Anyway, she had a collection of old fashioned nylon blouses that I'd guess were from the forties. I don't remember any of them being lacy but this is slightly reminiscent of those.

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@ossobuco,

Blood, youre gonna need a lot of blood and fake decay to emulate the zombistic look.

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@sozobe,

Well, heck, given the 2nd shirt photo, I can only think the leaves were hand-embroidered on this shirt. (See how they're not even, and follow the background weave?)

Are you sure you want to use it for a kid's Halloween costume? Personally, I'd use the shirt as a cover for, oh, pin-cushions (against a dark velvet, perhaps) for Christmas gifts.

Why not use the Saris instead, and save the shirt for future projects? Just me thinkin'...

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@BorisKitten,

It is pretty -- I kind of doubt it's hand-embroidered, but possible. The prettiness is why I bought it way back when (at least fifteen years), planning to use it for just such projects, and I haven't. I have a lot more antique stuff, including lace, if I'd want to make something like that (nice idea!). I'm a major thrift-store and garage-sale haunter, have two large containers full of textile odds and ends (fabric store remnants, leather, antique kimonos, antique saris, etc., etc. -- one of which, every once in a while, is Just The Thing).

It's not at all stretchy -- it does look like it has some sort of a stretchy sheen in the first pic, but that's just an accident of light/ bad camera (my blackberry).

I may not try for historical accuracy, just go for Old-Fashioned Lady Buried in Fancy Clothes Who Is Now a ZOMBIE!

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@sozobe,

Mrs F, who's a Fibre artist said that she believes its a 20th century maxchine lace with a plaited style. She said that, if you need something to compare, go to:LACE by Virgibia Churchill Bath. Its a 1974 book in a second or third edition. Some machine laces (like Bauhaus and Art Moderne styles of finger crochets are more valuable than many antique laces. Yours, in my WHO, is ok to use for a zombie -in-training.

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My girlfriend has a shirt nearly identical to that. It looks especially nice when she's wearing her pink bra.

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@sozobe,

Oooh... Love the idea of the Old-fashioned Lady Zombie!

I'll bet you could make a sort of elbow-length fingerless glove for her out of lace scraps: just a long strip of lace, sewn up, with thumb-holes, eh?

Speaking of old lace, I saw a nifty new use for old lace scraps (I have lots too!). You sew a few seed beads onto flowers and leaves in the lace, cut them out of the background, seal the edges, and string them on seed bead lengths to make dangle earrings. With several flower/leave lace dangles they look very nice, and of course they're very light-weight.

We simply MUST see the completed costume, when you're ready!

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Need to get going on this!

My mom just told me about a website called "chasing fireflies" -- lots of cool (and expensive!!) stuff there. Found this, which will serve as a good model I think. The cape is dead easy to make, then can do the rest of it around the lace shirt base:

http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/images/28998-large.jpg

http://www.chasing-fireflies.com/images/29686-large.jpg

I might even do her hair up like that but with filth in it. OR, I can get that wig ($18, the accessories aren't bad) and dirty it up and not have to worry about cleaning her actual hair... hmm...

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

I'm thinking 1920's-1930's?

I like this site:

http://www.fashion-era.com/index.htm

It has extensive information on each year of fashion complete with sketches.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

I have seen that, yep! That would be cool, I agree. I like the idea of wild hair though (hers is very long), but it could be like mostly out of an updo. Seeing as how she had to claw her way through all that dirt 'n' all.

The first picture is worse than I expected at that size, just took another with a different camera:

Wow. I think I have the exact same chest of drawers behind the shirt. My grandmother's bedroom set was given to me when I was a little girl. I have the full-size bed frame, vanity dresser w/mirror and matching vanity bench, and chest of drawers.

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@Debra Law,

Thanks!

I've looked around a bit but haven't come up with anything useful yet re: ID'ing this shirt... if you see anything specific though, please let me know.

Interesting about the furniture! That's all we have -- we "registered" at a local antique store for our wedding and that dresser was one of the things we got. (It wasn't in a set, the other things we got were a pair of unrelated bookcases. Well, unrelated to the dresser, but the bookcases are a matched set.)

Does yours have a glass top?

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Thanks!

I've looked around a bit but haven't come up with anything useful yet re: ID'ing this shirt... if you see anything specific though, please let me know.

Interesting about the furniture! That's all we have -- we "registered" at a local antique store for our wedding and that dresser was one of the things we got. (It wasn't in a set, the other things we got were a pair of unrelated bookcases. Well, unrelated to the dresser, but the bookcases are a matched set.)

Does yours have a glass top?

It's solid wood, but the decorative markings, the stain color, and drawer pulls are exactly the same.

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So I kinda messed up this year. I had a bazillion things going on and finished the costume in record time -- it was all done a week ago (last Monday). But I didn't really follow through.

After much thought I decided that the lace shirt wouldn't work unless I put WAY more effort into the whole thing than I wanted to. So I got a cheap witch costume as a base and then customized it with old, stained and somewhat torn sari fabric.

Problem is, even with the stains and the tears, it looked gorgeous when I finished. Too gorgeous. I had a hard time shredding it and staining it further to make it appropriately zombified.

So the dress was too perfect/ pretty to say "zombie." People thought she was a princess until they saw her zombified face, then they just got confused.

Hmph.

She still had fun.

Some pics later.

What Era is This Shirt From? (Or, Outfitting a Zombie)

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