Past Projects: Louis de Pointe du Lac waistcoat

Firstly... Sorry? Expo and my last term of university got a little bit on top of me and I had to sort of sign out and focus on sewing and essay writing for a while. But I'm back now, as university begins to wind down (only a couple of weeks left, eek!), so here's the promised post about my Louis waistcoat.

I took virtually no progress photos of this thing. When I get really into a project I'm usually rushing and when I'm doing both those things I don't ever remember to take photos.

Here is the one progress photo I did take.

Here you can see a finished pocket, finished buttons and some of how I kept track of where I was supposed to be putting the embroidery (in the form of messy chalk lines).
I made several - I think - interesting decisions style wise when designing Louis' waistcoat. Firstly I wanted to make it softer than Lestat's, both literally and metaphorically. It needed to be more natural and gentle and I wanted it to have a connection to the earth and the land because when we meet Louis he is (regrettably) a plantation owner. That and the fact he has lovely green eyes are where my colour choices came from. I found a warm green silk that also happened to be less crisp than the fabric I used for Arthur's Lestat waistcoat, it's the kind with the tiny deliberate runs and catches in the fabric, a small touch that I thought perfect. The beading and embroidery I also kept in warm tones, I was originally going to use copper coloured embroidery thread but felt that I needed to lift it a little so went with gold instead. Gold incidentally looks very fine with green eyes. 
Another decision I made was to cut the waistcoat in a slightly older style. The slanting front hem of waistcoats was pretty much phased out by the mid 1790s, if it was there it was in shorter waistcoats and it was very slight. In the 1980s Louis is a bit of a tramp, not a tendency one picks up out of nowhere so I assumed he would never have cared overmuch about fashion trends.
The embroidery was my final 'earthy' stylistic choice. I wanted to imply fields and nature and at first I looked up the indigo flower which is the crop the Pointe du Lac plantation grew but I couldn't think of a way to stylise it and incorporate it and so my love affair with embroidering wheat began. 

Gasp! An unedited photo!

My one gripe about this waistcoat is that I wasn't paying attention when I drew out the criss-crossing lines down the front so they all swoop in the same direction instead of coming together at the centre front and then apart again but I'm dealing with it.

The waistcoat is backed and lined with brown polycotton. The front, collar, pockets and facings are of green silk. The buttons are metal self cover buttons which I decorated with bronze coloured glass beads, arranged in the shape of a wheat sheaf and the embroidery was done with brown embroidery cotton and gold foil covered/metallic thread.

And that concludes my posts about our Vampire Chronicles cosplays because I refuse to talk about my breeches until I re-vamp (pun totally intended) them in the future. In celebration, have some of the photos we took!

 

 

All photos bar the progress one are by YukinePhotography.