A Dedicated Follower of Fashion

Hooray, we finally made it to an event that didn't get rained (or snowed ) out! Yesterday my friends and I went to the historic village at Allaire State Park to see our friend get fake-married as Maria Allaire. We all even made new dresses for the occasion! Mind you...I didn't plan on making a new dress. I was more than a bit sulky after my Regency picnic got rained out last month, and didn't feel like bothering. All I planned to do was make myself a nice summery bonnet, since I didn't have any 1830s bonnets (and cover a bonnet for a commission from my friend Alice), and just wear my cream cotton poplin.

Just popping in to say that I have been sewing, but I keep getting rained out of events so I've got nothing to show for it! I was supposed to have a Regency picnic tomorrow, but this weekend's going to be a total washout - a couple of inches of rain predicted over tomorrow and Sunday! Not good picnic weather. So I'll leave you with a picture of a 1950s-style skirt I made at the end of April instead. (Worn one day when it wasn't raining, fancy that!) Just a plain old novelty cotton poppy-print, but I think it's cute!

With truly dismal hair, for which I apologize! I really thought I had a wig that would work with minimal tweaking (the tweaking needed was not minimal), and I didn't want to go to the trouble of setting all my hair last night for a ten-minute shoot (this is still valid, in my books)! So...just try and ignore the hair.

Not entirely finished, mind you. It still wants a good amount of trim - robings, waistcoat, &tc. But it's done enough to wear, and I did so on Saturday, while at the Indian King Tavern for an open house. And they're not very good pictures, I do apologize - very rushed after an afternoon in the 18thc before changing for work!

This dress (and an overgown to go with it) was meant to be worn to Fonthill Castle in PA this past Saturday, for a friend's birthday outing. The weather, however, decided that it would be extremely seasonally appropriate to dump some very messy snow on us that day, to which we said...maybe we'll reschedule. None of our outfits were quite intended to handle that particular weather!

As promised, a nice detailed writeup on the construction and design of my painted petticoats! I've named this design the "Anne". Both designs can now be found in my shop: Charlotte and Anne !

Some of you might be familiar with the Francaise Dinner my group of costumer friends has been putting on for the past few years, lately in Alexandria...it was this past weekend, and for various reasons, a few of us in the Philly area weren't able to attend. So I thought it might be nice to have a compensatory event the same weekend, just so we could play 18thc dress-up this weekend too! We ended up having a nice little lunch at City Tavern in Philadelphia yesterday, that I decided to very cleverly decided to call the Loser Anglaise Luncheon. (Because an anglaise luncheon is not as cool as a francaise dinner, you see. Very clever indeed.) The point wasn't to make anything new, but I did anyway - primarily because I wanted to get a nice display of the samples of painted petticoats I've been working on for the past few weeks. (The petticoats will get their own post in the next couple days, fear not.) And I really wanted a jacket to wear with a painted petti rather than a ...