A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

I'm in retail, so today and tomorrow will be madly busy for me (at least I wasn't on the opening shift, eh what), but I haven't posted here in a bit so I thought I'd do so today! I have been sewing; after the Pumpkin Tea I decided I needed a new dress for a little Victorian Christmas event at a local historic house. Totally needed. I had some plaid silk taffeta from Jen Thompson in the stash, which I think is shaping up to be a very nice 1860s dress. That'll be worn the weekend of Dec. 13-14, but I'll take a couple pics when I finish it, which should be well before that! This week, I also made a cute-ugly print 1960s shift dress for Thanksgiving...which turned out to not fit over my butt, so no photos of that. And I just bought some imperfect Renoirs from American Duchess' sale! You're welcome .

A friend in Virginia hosts the Regency-themed Pumpkin Tea around this time every year, and this year I was able to make it, along with some of my local peeps, which made for an entertaining (if very full!) car ride down. The order of the day is eating and socializing, and believe me, there was plenty of both! I must mention that the pumpkin soup was especially amazing. The lot of us, from In the Long Run

So...I love my cranberry wool gown, but I've been wearing it for upwards of three years as my only cool-weather 18thc, and I have become a Little Bit Tired of it. I only had a week to make something after Halloween at the Met, but I thought I could make a simple wool jacket in that time. (Spoilers: I could!) And since occasionally fellow costumers ask how I make things, I thought I'd make this into a "This is how I sew" project. Usually I'm pretty bad about documenting the sewing process. (And if that's boring to you, you may skip to the end and the event pictures!)

I went up to the Death Becomes Her gallery exhibit with a few friends, we met up with some more of our costumer friends, and had a really good time! There was only one lady in historic costume that I didn't know (at least as a friend of a friend), which either means I know a lot of awesome costumers (which is true), or that there were way more gothy-steampunky outfits than historic (which is also true). It was fun to see so many people dressed up at the Met though, and lots of them thought we were super-awesome...which is always very flattering! Plus, I was on CBS news! Just very briefly (they took a couple-second clip from when I was modeling for the drawing session), but, still yay! Link to CBS's video here ...and yes, Leia totally is a fashionista in every era, hehe! I wasn't terribly concerned with getting pictures of my dress, partly because I'm not thrilled with it, and partly because the lighting in a museum is not great for getting photos of a black dress! ...

This past week I've managed to finish the bodice of the 1816 mourning gown, apart from the one line of trim that goes under the bust, which will wait til after I put the skirt on. They're not great pictures, since I took them tonight, and indoors with an all-black dress doesn't work very well...but here's what it looks like so far.

But no pictures. Sorry, boring. Our planned Ren Faire outing was yesterday, but the weather was absolute rubbish (rained all day), so everyone decided against going. There wasn't another date we could all attend, so in a way I'm glad I didn't finish K Parr! Not that I'd have worn her to a mud-filled faire either way. Fabric's too expensive for that. I've ordered my black fabric for the mourning dress, have a pair of 1770s stays in progress as well as a 1770s shift, and made a wool twill under-petticoat to wear with my 18thc stuff. It's purple and pink and very cozy. (The petticoat was yesterday at a surprisingly productive sewing day.) Oh, right, I did make a black reticule to use with my mourning dress, and took a picture of that. Hooray picture! It has dodgy tassels. And I apparently sewed the whole thing with navy thread without noticing til the very end, oops.

I guess it's time to do an updatey sort of thing here, no? Poor neglected blog. And I'll have to confess that I'm not going to be able to finish Katherine Parr in time for the ren faire. She keeps throwing all these little snarls in the works, and while none of them are omg huge disaster, I can't work them out by the 11th. Even if I drove myself crazy (and took a week off work!) I don't think I could finish in time. I want this to be my best effort, not corner-cutting because I'm fed up with it. But you'll see her again, promise! After Christmas at the very latest, as I've made some more costumey plans...which I've got to tell you are such a relief. (Which is how I know I'm correct to put this project on hiatus.) A quick rundown: I'm going to the Met's Death Becomes Her exhibit for their Halloween event, and am planning on a c1816 evening dress. I got the bodice and sleeves all mocked up and fitted the other day, but have to wait ...