Farewell to Summer tea

Just a little last-minute Sunday tea with friends - in Regency, as you do!

We mostly rewore dresses, as it was meant to be a low-stress event (although Jenny La Fleur made a beautifully embellished dress that had lace appliqued down the front and put us all to shame!), and Alice forgot she had a perfectly serviceable new dress from early summer that hadn't been worn and started making a new sari dress anyway! And it came out very lovely too!

I decided I wanted the undersleeves I always intended to make for the Lizzie Bennet dress, as we were forecast some fall temperatures this weekend, and I thought I might like long sleeves. It took a day of digging through most of my bins and craft supply drawers, but I finally located the bit of printed voile I'd been saving since making the dress in 2013! (And I've moved since then, so I'm pretty impressed I still had it. There was a lot of doubting and pondering, "but did I throw it out??") More reinforcement to never throw any bits of fabric away ever, right?

The sleeves are about as basic as you can get: just a straight sleeve with a curve in at the wrist and flare over the hand, same shape as the ones in Patterns of Fashion, although mine aren't cut on the bias like the originals. I didn't have enough of the print to do it without piecing, and that seemed annoying.

Lined in white linen, and hand sewn (as is the rest of the dress). They're tacked into the band of the short sleeves, but it's the work of about a minute to pull out the stitching when I want short sleeves again. (Slightly longer to tack them back in, but not much!)

Where's that camera?

Somewhat skeptical.

After tea we went walking in the park, because isn't that what you do in Regency? Walking...and lounging on lawns, and running across fields just because they were there (the last two might've just been me).