A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

 A relatively short post: 1880s foundations! I don't especially like making the undies, but I do like having the correct foundations for an outfit; it makes all the difference.  

 See, I do still sew! Not as often, or extensively (I got married and bought a house this year), but I still sew and even occasionally finish things. Heh. Not that often. Heh. Instagram is the place to be for second-generation costumers who are too lazy to do writeups much (it me. I mean me), but I'm still hanging on to the pictures-AND-words format. So there, steadily advancing social media trends. Regardless...I've got an opportunity to do some 1890s in January, and I wanted to see if I could bang out a new, mid-1890s dress over break. I haven't yet done any banging of outfits (ahem), but I did start and finish a couple of new petticoats! I have, uh, a lot of petticoats, but none that give a nice fashionable A-line for the mid-1890s. And fashionable was pretty wide mid-decade! Anyway, I made two new petticoats over the past few weeks, and finished the Big Fluffer the other day. Warning: bad pictures taken at awkward angle ahead. I'm not sure where the camera tripod is...

As mentioned in the lavender plaid post, I figured I'd break this down separately, as it would be too long as one very big post I think! Here we have a What To Wear Underneath Your Turn-of-the-Century-Outfit Post: in my case, shoes, stockings, chemise, drawers, corset, corset cover, and petticoat. A reminder of the silhouette we're going for here. I don't make gorgeous underthings like some costumers do (and I say that with nothing but admiration...and okay a good bit of envy!), so you'll have to deal with ugly dress-dummy pictures from me. Yes, it sounds like a lot if this isn't what you do on the weekends and aren't familiar with it, but with all natural fibers it's really not bad. Of course you sweat, but it's not like wearing a load of nasty polyester that doesn't breathe! Plus I firmly subscribe to the "if you're spending a day in the sun it's better to cover up" line of thinking. And at a certain temperature, "we...

First off, I neglected to post about it, but I was a runner up in the Your Wardrobe Unlock'd costume contest this year, which was pretty cool! (Anybody who voted for my dress, thank you. I am surprised and flattered.) I never did get the icon proclaiming me a runner-up that was listed as a prize, though, so I made one for myself. (With apologies to Hyperbole and a Half ...) Besides serious Paint creativity, what have I been up to? Um. The striped 1780s dress and I had a falling-out. I didn't want a weird butt-bubble in the skirt, but it did. I put it in the naughty pile and then proceeded to get sick. The current plan is to wear the Dress-in-a-Day for the Francaise Dinner. Not too horrible as I've never actually worn it to an event! "Styled" a new-old wig to wear with said dress, as a friend's borrowing my usual 1780s wig. I say "styled" because it was really more manhandling. I had an old ratty wig I tried and failed to style into a pouf ...

Been sadly slacking off with my sewing this week - and I'm not sure I'll have a new dress for the event on Sept. 21st, after all, but I'm going to try! Anyway, I did manage to finish my natural form petticoat, based on TV170 but, er, adapted by me (in avoidance of tucks and inability to read directions). Although you may notice the random tuck I did have to take because I made it too long. Like always.

I was hoping I could post about more finished things, but I want to get this post in before I go to work tonight, so it is what it is. This week's been the week of underwear sewing! I didn't get much more done on the corset, because I still need some of the supplies, so I decided to work on the other undies.

I finished all this at the end of 2010, though I had the corset in a half-finished state for at least a year! The corset is made from the pattern for the1844 corset in Corsets and Crinolines , of a layer of cotton canvas covered in plain white cotton. It's mostly corded; there are two rows of cotton cording on each seam. The front has two cable ties, and each back edge is boned with cable ties, just so the lacing isn't all wonky. The original corset in the book has stiff boning on each seam, and I'm honestly not sure why I decided to use mostly cording instead...I started this so long ago, I really forget! I think maybe I didn't have enough cable ties at the time...? That's the reason you can see such wrinkles, the cording's not stiff enough to smooth them out. On to the petticoats...First the corded one. It's made of ivory linen (because I had some laying around at the time), and corded with 25 rowns of hemp. Then the flounced petticoat: And th...